Comfort and Joy
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Next in the "Brutus" series. It's Murdock's first Christmas since he was released from the V.A.; but both new and old business and enemies prove to have other plans for the A-Team over the holiday season.
1. Chapter 1

Comfort and Joy

"Hannibal…" for the 6th time in the last minute, Face tried to get a word in on his telephone but found it difficult because every time he got so much as a syllable out, Murdock came back around and about tripped them both up over the extended phone cord again, "Murdock, do you mind? I'm trying to talk to Hannibal."

"Oh that's alright, Facey, I don't mind, you ain't bothering me," Murdock assured him as he continued pacing around the living room.

"How reassuring," Face groaned, "Hannibal…Murdock," he said as the pilot made his rounds again, "Murdock, exactly what _are_ you doing?"

"I'm following Herb."

"I see…and who is Herb?" Face asked.

Murdock pointed to the floor, "He's that little ant by your shoe."

"Ants? In this place?" Face absentmindedly started stomping his foot, "Great, I just had the place fumigated, now I'm going to have to clear out of here and set off a bug bomb in this place."

"Oh don't do that, Facey, his whole family's making itself at home in the soap dish in the bathroom," Murdock told him, "You wouldn't want them to have to lose their reservation now would you?"

"Murdock," Face put his hand over the receiver, "Do me a favor, will you? Take Herb and show his family the way out, I'm trying to have a private conversation with Hannibal."

"Well why didn't you say so in the first place?" the pilot asked as he bent down and seemed to pick up the ant between his two fingers, "Come on, Herb, let's leave Faceman alone."

Once the door closed, Face took his hand off the receiver and said into it loudly, "Hannibal!"

"Here, I'm here, Face, what is it?" the colonel sounded slightly annoyed by the inconvenience of the phone call.

"Hannibal, can't you please come and get Murdock to stay with you for a few days? He's starting to get on my nerves, and besides," Face walked over to the calendar on the wall and pressed his finger against the square for the day's date, "I'm trying to get a present for him but it's not going to be a surprise with him always underfoot."

"Sorry, Face, you're out of luck," Hannibal told him, "I'm shopping for him too this week."

"That just figures," Face groaned, "The rest of the world waits until Christmas Eve to do their shopping, and we're dumb enough to both do it the first week in December. And B.A. just got done with having Murdock stay with him for the week…can't we send him over to Jean's house?"

"No good," Hannibal replied, and Face could almost hear him shaking his head, "For one thing she had him first, before he switched with B.A., and for another, she's trying to get a surprise ready for him too."

"What is it?" Face asked.

"We're all going to find out when it gets ready, but she has to give me the word first," Hannibal explained, "Sorry, Lieutenant, you'll just have to tough it out with the Captain for a few more days."

"No I won't," Face replied threateningly, "Because if I have to bug bomb this place, we're both coming to stay with you, I hope you still have that pullout couch."

He heard the Colonel let out an exasperated huff on the other end of the line. "Alright, look, I'll call Jean and see if there's any chance she can take him this week, but don't hold your breath," Hannibal advised him.

"Thank you," Face said sharply into the phone before slamming down the receiver.

He went over to the phone stand and opened its drawer and took out an ad circular he'd found in the mail. It was advertising items on sale at a local toy store and he'd seen just the thing for Murdock, he just hoped the pilot didn't find out about it before Christmas. There it was on page 3 of the circular: a twelve inch long remote control airplane with assorted builds and models to pick from, two AA batteries required for the control, paint and decals optional. And the one in the circular was just the one he was going to get, a miniaturized model of a blood red German Fokker tri-plane, Murdock was going to love it.

Murdock poked his head out of the bedroom and asked, "Something wrong, Face?"

"No," he answered as he closed the drawer, his body blocking the view from the Captain, "Just trying to figure something out. Tell me, Murdock, when is it time for you to go stay with Jean again?"

"Uh…" Murdock looked at the watch in his jacket pocket and said, "Next week."

"Terrific," Face dryly remarked, "Uh…Murdock."

"Yeah Faceman?"

"Have you two said anything about Christmas yet?" Face asked.

"What about it?" Murdock asked, "It's coming at the same time of the year it always does."

"I mean," Face tried to maintain his composure as he spoke, "Are you going to be spending the day with her or not?"

"Uh…I don't know yet," Murdock replied, "I don't think she's got anything planned, but you never know."

"True," Face nodded.

Murdock had a knowing half-smile on his face, the cat daring somebody to look past his teeth for any sign of the canary, "Hey Face, can you keep a secret?"

"Murdock, how long have you known me?" Face asked.

"Answer my question."

"Sure I can keep a secret, what is it?" Face wanted to know.

"I found something for the Saint, I want to show it to you," he said as he turned around and excitedly ran back into the bedroom.

Face shrugged and slowly followed behind and said, "Alright, what is it?"

Murdock opened the doors on the walk-in closet and rifled through the clothes on the rack, much to Face's chagrin as Murdock tossed all of his fine suits about like a bunch of rags.

"Here it is, ain't it nifty?" Murdock asked as he held the jacket up to himself.

Face wanted to slap himself, he swore if Murdock had ESP he was going to strangle the pilot. The jacket in question was blood red with two white patches on the shoulders with two black German iron crosses in the centers. But he managed to keep himself composed and said, "It's very nice, Murdock, where'd you find that?"

"Well it's the strangest thing," Murdock said innocently as he hung the jacket back up, "Hannibal and I were getting ready to leave the film studio one afternoon and it just happened into my hand."

Face could decipher that, "You snatched it off the rack as the wardrobe people passed by."

"Well if you want to make it sound cheap," Murdock replied as he closed the closet doors.

Face laughed and went along with it, "She'll love it, it looks like her, the blood will never show."

"That's the idea," Murdock said, "But you know, Face, I'm having a hard time figuring out what to get the Colonel for Christmas." Before Face had a chance to say anything, Murdock added, "You know, this is the first Christmas I've spent outside of the V.A. in over 10 years, so I really want to get him something special, you got any ideas?"

"Hannibal's not picky, just get him a new box of cigars, he'll love it," Face said.

"Yeah but Face, I want to do something better than that," Murdock told him, "What're you getting him?"

"More cigars," Face answered, "It's one thing he can never have enough of."

Murdock wasn't sure about that idea however. The phone rang and Face ran to answer it; it was Hannibal telling him that Jean was ready for them, to get Murdock and bring him over, but not to tell him anything about it.

"Well that ought to be easy since _I_ don't know anything about it," he told Hannibal.

He could almost hear Hannibal's grin over the phone as he remarked, "That's the spirit, kid."

So, he got Murdock and they piled into his 'Vette and he drove them over to Jean's house to meet with the others, and when they arrived Face saw B.A.'s van parked up in the driveway. As they went up to the door, Murdock was tackled from behind and blindfolded.

"Hey! What's going on?" he asked.

"We're playing a game, Murdock," Jean said, and she grabbed his hand and placed it on somebody who was standing in front of him and asked, "Who's this?"

"Uh…" he ran his hand over a pair of broad shoulders with some kind of familiar light material covering them and said, "Hannibal."

"Correct," he felt something shoved into his hand and knew it was a cigar.

"And who's this?" Jean redirected his hand to someone else and he felt a hard stomach and inching his hand up he felt a likewise hard chest, and then something jagged and metal.

"B.A.," he said.

"That's right," Jean said, and he felt two people grab his arms and hold them out to the sides and walk him off somewhere.

"Where're we going?" he asked.

"We've got a surprise for you, Murdock," Face told him, "No peeking!"

"As if I could, right?" the pilot asked good naturedly.

He was led up the stairs and felt somebody standing on either side of him and sensed somebody else behind him and somebody in front of him. Once at the top of the stairs he was escorted down the hall and taken into a room, and before the blindfold was removed he could hear gasps of awe from the others and heard their comments.

"Oh wow," Face said.

"Man!" B.A. commented.

"Nice touch, kid," Hannibal said, not much emotion coming through but it was obvious from his tone that he was impressed with whatever it was.

"Alright, Murdock," Jean said as he felt her removing the blindfold, "Here's your surprise."

He kept his eyes closed for a couple of seconds before looking, he wanted it to be a total surprise upon first glance. Murdock thought he'd died and gone to heaven. The storage room leading to the house's fire escape outside the window was now filled with full sized arcade games, and all of them plugged in and turned on and ready for use. The only other thing in the room and also the only piece of furniture there, was a brown leather couch that clearly wasn't new, but still had some wear to it. Both of his hands came up over his mouth as he gasped in shock at the sight before him, all those consoles turned on, all the colors and lights flashing as the games were just waiting for somebody to start playing them. He turned back to the others and saw the rest of the Team was just as surprised as he was, only Jean looked like she was expecting a response from him.

"Is this real?" he asked, not sure what to make of it.

"For what I paid, you better believe it's real," she told him, "Go on, have a look."

He turned back and saw the games all lined up alongside one another and he went over to them and ran his hands along the controls and the lit up screens and he went around looking them all over and practically hugging them, as if he'd been reunited with some old friends. And perhaps in a way, he was, he went around reading the titles of all the games and mentally compared the list to those he'd had in his room at the V.A., "Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Asteroids, Centipede, Phoenix, Star Wars, Tron, ohhhh," he laughed as he came across a notably older game, "Computer Space, I remember this one, this was the first game they ever got in at the V.A., about five years after the game came out."

Face also noticed a couple of very large and very fancy pinball machines as well as a jukebox in the corners of the room.

"How'd you get all this stuff?" he asked her.

"Never mind that, how'd you get it all up here and set up?" Hannibal asked.

"Wasn't easy," Jean answered as she walked with a pronounced forward hunch, "About threw my back out getting them straightened up." She walked over to the pilot and asked him, "What d'ya think, Murdock, you like it?"

"Like it?" he repeated in disbelief, "This is _amazing_!"

"That's good," she replied, "This is now officially _your_ game room, I was hoping you'd like it."

Murdock looked like he'd been knocked for a loop and now could be knocked over with a feather, "This is mine?"

"Yeah," Jean answered, and pointing to one game she explained, "I had these all fixed so you don't need any quarters to work them."

"Oh that'll be great," Murdock told her. He grabbed her by the hands and jumped up and down excitedly like a child on Christmas morning and told her, "I love it, love it-love-it-_love it _."

Face turned towards Hannibal and commented to him, "Have to admit, this is pretty neat."

"It certainly is," the Colonel responded as he took it all in. And he knew that the end result had to have cost a lot more than Jean had originally told him.

"Of course it's not finished yet," Jean was telling Murdock and gesturing with one hand she told him, "I'm going to have that wall knocked out since there's nothing in the room next door, that way we can expand it and also get some game tables put in here."

Hannibal laughed and said, "You already got it so you're never going to get Murdock out of here, Jean."

"Well I don't figure for the first night anyway," she replied as she followed Murdock around as he made his rounds past all the games once again and looked them all over as if making sure that it was in fact real.

"You should've held off on this for a couple more weeks," Face told her, "That'd be a Christmas present he'd never forget."

"That would be a Christmas present _nobody_ would forget," Jean corrected him as she sat on the arm of the couch, "But don't worry, I'll think of something else by then." She turned and looked at Murdock who was fondling the Star Wars game up and down like a blind man trying to fine tune a sculpture and said, "In the meantime I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the show."

* * *

After a while, the other Team members had left and each returned to their own homes, and Jean left Murdock alone with his games for a couple of hours. Later in the afternoon she returned to the room and said to him, "It got quiet in here, is everything alright?"

"Oh sure," Murdock answered from where he was seated on the couch, "Everything's fine here."

"Good," she said as she walked over to the couch and sat down beside him.

"I still can't believe it," he said as he looked back to the newfound arcade, "How did you pull this off?"

"Wasn't easy but I managed," Jean answered, "I've had this little surprise in motion for a long time now."

"Wasn't cheap either," Murdock said, "How far back did all of this set you?"

"Don't worry about it," she said with a small smile, "I've gotten it all taken care of."

"No no no," he shook his head, "Now I appreciate what you did, darling, I really do, this is the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me, but I know you're not making enough at the movie studio to clear all this, I insist…"

"Murdock, it's not necessary," Jean said.

But he wasn't having any of it, "No, I insist on squaring away on some of this anyway," he reached into his jacket and Jean saw him take out a pile of bills with a fat rubber band wrapped around them and he said, "I know this isn't enough but it ought to be a good enough start to help put back some of the money you lost."

Jean wouldn't take it and she looked at him curiously and asked him, "Murdock, how much money is that?"

"It's five thousand dollars," he answered.

"Where'd you get that from?" she asked.

"It's mine of course," Murdock told her, "You see, Saint, when you get free room and board courtesy of the V.A. hospital for 10 years, you really _don't_ have a whole lot of expenses…so after every mission, Face has to keep himself in fancy suits, B.A. has to keep himself in gold and up to his mudsucker armpits in tools and gadgets and Hannibal's got to have his cigars and more weapons, more ammo, but I got to keep most of my money from all of our jobs."

Jean leaned over towards him and asked, "How much _is_ that after 10 years?"

"Well let me see," Murdock reached into a pocket and pulled out what looked like a small blue bankbook and thumbing through it he said, "Let's see, take out the deductions over the years…$3 for bubble gum, $50 for Billy's distemper shots, $4,000 when we had to replace Amy's car that got set on fire, plus the deposits from the last six months…uh…$97,000 and 42 cents."

Jean leaned over his shoulder and saw that that was the correct amount written at the bottom of the page. When Murdock saw the puzzled look on her face he decided to explain, "Business used to be a lot better and we did get paid more consistently and in larger amounts, between the four of us we've probably accumulated a few million dollars over the years but with repairs, medical treatment, ammo reload, weapon replacements, and damages owed, we don't have near enough to show for all that. But I've managed to hold on to most of mine."

"Where do you keep it all?" Jean asked.

"Shhhh," Murdock put a finger to his lips and got a look on his face like a mischievous little boy, "That's a secret. Don't worry, it's right where I can get to all of it, just need a moment's notice."

"What're you going to do with it?" Jean asked, "For that matter, what were you going to do with _that_ much?"

Murdock grabbed the stack of bills and flipped through them casually as he explained, "This is my first Christmas out of the V.A. since I got back from 'Nam, I want it to be special, and I want to get all of the guys something special too to celebrate."

"That's why you socked all the money away," Jean said, "You _knew_ this day was coming."

Murdock grinned big and said, "You know the saying save a little money for a rainy day, in California we don't have rainy days, we have rainy seasons." His smile disappeared as he confessed, "But I don't know what to get them."

"Oh you'll think of something," Jean told him.

"I know, but in the meantime," Murdock ignored her protests and shoved the money in her pocket and commented, "Geez, do you put your wallet in with a shoehorn or something?"

"Murdock, I don't want your money," Jean said.

He thought about it for a minute and then slowly nodded his head, "Okay…but since we're pretty much just playing house here for the time being, then I'm going to use it towards the things we need around here…groceries, utilities, you gotta let me use it for something around here to square us. Jean, you spent more money on those games than it would cost to get B.A. a new van complete with all the bells and whistles and machine guns."

Jean nodded and said in a way that suddenly reminded Murdock of a young Dorothy Lamour in 'The Hurricane', surprisingly because he couldn't remember how many decades ago he'd seen that film, "I know, I know." Then she added, "It's a lousy compensation for the years you lost at the hospital, but I figured it's a start."

"Ohhhh," he wasn't even sure how to respond to that. All of a sudden everything seemed to be happening so fast and it was strange to him. He knew that Jean wouldn't believe him when he told her that the V.A. hadn't been _that_ bad, and that he'd managed to bide his time very well there. She'd only been in his room for one night and that had been enough to convince her that he needed to be busted out permanently and as quickly as possible, and his room was the highlight of the hospital.

After a minute the silence got to be too much and he broke it as he got up from the couch and said to her, "Hey, you gotta try this game, it's great."

Jean laughed and leaned back against the couch, "No thanks, I'm notoriously bad at video games, I can _never_ get the hang of the controls."

"Oh I don't believe that," he said as he doubled back and yanked her to her feet, "Come on, I'll show you."

And the next couple of hours passed with Jean getting a crash course in every video game in the room, with Murdock either standing beside or behind her, acting as a puppeteer and using his hands over hers when she missed the right moves on the controls. She had been right, she was terrible at just about every game she played, but the two of them still had fun coming to that conclusion.

* * *

The next morning, Hannibal drove out to Jean's house because they were both doing scenes in the same upcoming movie during Hannibal's absence from the Aquamaniac films, and she wasn't answering her phone. He saw her car in the driveway and took that as one good sign so far, next he found the door unlocked, not so good; opening it up he called out but heard no response. He checked the rooms one by one and decided to look in the living room first, and it paid off. Laying on the couch, Murdock and Jean were still asleep and by now were a tangle of limbs curled and twisted into positions that would make it impossible for the blood circulation to remain flowing. Hannibal smiled to himself as he walked over to the couch and poked them to wake them up. Murdock was the first to stir and he looked up at the Colonel through half opened eyes and got out a slurred, "'Ey Hannibal."

"Good morning, Captain," he replied, then he started poking Jean, who was slower to come around and show any sign of life, "Corporal, I command you to wake up."

"Ahh go away, Hannibal," Jean murmured as she tried turning on her side.

"Come on, kid," Hannibal told her as he grabbed her by the arm, "We're wanted at the studio today."

Jean managed to turn over and away from him and mumbled, "Tell them I'm sick, tell them I quit, I don't care, I'm not going in today."

"We'll see about that," Hannibal told her, and he ordered Murdock to try bringing her around, while he went to the kitchen and whipped up a quick cup of coffee.

When he came back Murdock had managed to pull himself out of the human pretzel but Jean was flat on her back on the couch with her eyes closed and didn't show any sign of moving anytime soon.

"Here kid, try this," he said as he pressed the cup into her hand.

Jean tilted her head up enough to take a sip, but as soon as she did, her eyes opened wide and she jumped up off the couch, "Coffee? What the hell did you give me that for?" Before he could get a word in edgewise, she hopped over the coffee table and lunged at him, "You know I don't drink that junk!"

"Then why," Hannibal managed to ask despite the grip she had on his throat, "Do you keep it in the house?"

"That's for company," Jean said as she let go of him.

"Well, it got you up anyway," Hannibal pointed out, "It can do its job one way or the other, and now, let's do ours."

"Is Murdock coming too?" she asked.

"Yeah I'm coming," he answered as he put his jacket on, "They need a pilot for aerial footage and I'm the guy for the job."

"They always need somebody to get their cameras in the air," Jean said, "But I've noticed they're relying more and more on special effects when the choppers are actually part of the movies, ever since that accident a few years back, remember that movie where the guy and the two kids were decapitated by the rotor when the chopper crashed?"

"Oh sure I remember that," Murdock said somberly and shook his head, "Tragic what happened, but that was at night, they had no business doing that stuff, I do all of my stunts for the camera in the daytime."

"And a good thing too," Jean replied, "We wouldn't want those twits at the studio to start putting 2 and 2 together on how you can fly anything at any time, and so perfectly."

Hannibal wasn't concerned, "They're not that bright, now come on, time's wasting."


	2. Chapter 2

Murdock held his hand to his forehead as he staggered off, his legs feeling wobbly like they were full of jelly and with circulation only running through his feet and his knees. Off somewhere he heard people calling him, and he realized it was Hannibal and Jean; they were running towards him to see if he was alright. He didn't know what had happened, everything had been fine upon takeoff, but even though that little needle said they were filled up with fuel, the camera chopper had started to drop only a couple minutes after he got them off the ground. The cameraman was a stuntman since emergency exits had to be made on occasions and this was one such occasion; he'd bailed out of the chopper before it hit the ground, saving himself and the $2,000 movie camera, but Murdock had stayed in the cockpit to the bitter jarring end that left him rattled like the end of a snake's tail. In fact he would almost swear when he shook his head he could hear his brain rattling around inside of it.

"Murdock, are you alright?" Jean asked as she ran up to him.

"Oh sure," he answered, "I just got an unexpected urge to fall down," and promptly did, right onto his knees.

"That was a rough landing you took," Hannibal said as he slipped Murdock's arm over his shoulder to help him up, "Are you sure you're alright?"

"I got a little headache, Colonel, but other than that…" Murdock trailed off.

Jean flicked off his cap and felt along his scalp, "You hit your head in the crash, didn't you?"

"Just bumped it a little," he insisted.

"All the same," Hannibal told him, "I already called Face, he's going to come by and pick you up, you're done for the day, Captain."

"Aw but Hannibal," Murdock started to protest.

Hannibal stuck his gloved finger in the pilot's face and told him, "That is an order, Murdock, they're already talking the possibility of mechanical error on that chopper, and if one's got a problem the next could too, I don't want to take anymore chances with you here today. Just go home with Face, take it easy and get some rest."

Murdock slowly nodded and gave in, "Yes, Colonel."

"That's a boy," Hannibal smiled and patted him on the shoulder.

"We'll be home when we get done with our scenes," Jean added.

"I won't be long," Hannibal told him, "We'll shoot 40 minutes to get 2 minutes of useable footage then I'll peel off the scrubs and mask and swing by to see how you're doing."

Murdock grumbled something as he closed his eyes like a migraine was already setting in and said, "'Preciate it, Colonel."

"Smith!" a voice called out from somewhere on the lot.

"Uh-oh," Jean said, "One of the director's yes men."

"Smith!" the assistant said as he came up to them, "What're you doing out here? You're wanted in wardrobe, now!"

"Relax, pal," Hannibal smugly replied, "After years of rubber suits, getting changed into a doctor's uniform will be a breeze." He leaned over to Jean and said confidentially to her, "I'll bet this guy has heart attacks for the fun of it, he couldn't calm down to save his life."

Murdock turned and caught something from the corner of his eye. It couldn't be…could it? He blinked and pulled a piece of eye crust out of the other corner and looked again, there was nobody there. He saw Face's corvette come up to the studio front and he went to meet the Lieutenant. He swung his legs over the door on his side of the car and Face stepped on the accelerator and did a wide U turn and headed back the way he'd come.

"So what happened?" he asked, "Hannibal said there was some kind of accident."

"Oh, problems with the chopper," Murdock said as he felt the back of his head and winced, "We went down and I landed it but I did it the hard way."

"You alright?" Face asked.

"Yeah, the Colonel just recommended I take it easy for the rest of the day."

"Well it sounds like good advice anyway," Face replied.

"Face," Murdock looked over to him, "I left Billy's leash at B.A.'s apartment when I was there last week, can we swing by so I can pick it up?"

"Oh, we'll do that another time, Murdock," Face said, "It'll just take us out of the way and I think it'll be a good idea to get you home and get some ice on your head."

"Alright but when I take Billy out I gotta make sure he don't get out of the yard," Murdock told him, "You know how fast that boy can be."

Face turned to the side as he rolled his eyes; the way Murdock's imagination worked, an invisible dog could run as fast as a cheetah on rocket skates.

* * *

Once they got back to the house, Murdock got an icepack out of the freezer and put it on his head and settled on the couch to lie down for a while. Face stayed with him, watching TV in the chair by the couch, and after a while they both fell asleep. A short while later Murdock was jerked awake by somebody screaming and he realized that it was Face and they both wound up falling on the floor in the process, and that woke him up finally.

"Face, what's the matter?" Murdock asked.

Once Face became aware of his surroundings he calmed down and said with a heavy sigh, "Nothing, Murdock, just a nightmare."

"Oh!" Murdock shot up, and was suddenly bouncing up and down like an overeager student with his hand raised, "Ooh ooh ooh! Let me guess! Was it the one where you're skydiving and you've just jumped out of the plane and up above you hear the instructor yelling 'hey! Where's my knapsack?'?"

"No," Face replied as he got up again, "That wasn't the one."

Murdock tried again, "Was it the one where you're being chased by a porcupine who keeps asking you for a hug?"

Face cracked at the mention of that one, "No, Murdock," he barely managed to keep from laughing.

"Well then what was it?" Murdock asked as he recollected his icepack which had seen better moments of frigidity.

Face sat back down and explained, "Just usual stuff, the Hanoi Hilton."

"Ah," Murdock nodded understandingly, "Yeah…the porcupine would've been an improvement."

Face looked to his friend with a hint of desperation in his eyes as he asked, "Do you think we're ever going to get over what happened back there?"

Murdock just shrugged neutrally, then he said, "You know I thought it was just me today. Right after the chopper crashed, I thought I saw…no, forget it, it's too crazy even for me."

"What was it, Murdock?" Face inquired.

Murdock looked like he was preparing himself for the worst and finally said, "I thought I saw Cong soldiers at the studio," he laughed nervously and added, "Now isn't _that_ crazy?"

Ordinarily the Lieutenant might try and be reassuring, but this time he didn't say anything.

"Hey Face," Murdock said, "You know…I get it that no side's better than the other really, but it's never really made sense to me."

"What didn't?" Face asked.

"Why did they do it? Why does anybody do it? What drives people to torture and maim and kill like that? I've been trying to come up with the answer since day one, and nothing."

Now it was Face's turn to shrug and he replied, "I wish I knew."

Murdock shook his head, "No…maybe you don't, maybe we're better off not knowing…maybe knowing why the monster _is_ the monster makes the rest of us into them as well."

Face laughed and said, "You should try that philosophy when and if Hannibal ever gets his job back as the Aquamaniac."

Murdock thought about it and laughed.

* * *

And in fact, he _did_ try his philosophy about monsters on Hannibal when he and Jean came to the house later that afternoon. Hannibal had been his usual encouraging self but also told Murdock, "It has potential but if we were to have a sudden legion of Aquamaniacs running around then I'd probably be out of a job permanently."

"Unless you could make the original Aquamanaic the _leader_ of them all," Jean told him, "In which case they'd _have_ to keep you."

Hannibal seemed to glow when he heard that suggestion.

"Hannibal," Jean said, "Why don't you and Face stay for dinner?"

"Yeah!" Murdock's eyes lit up and he was practically jumping on the couch, "That'd be great!"

"Oh…" Hannibal tried to wave it off, "I'd love to but…"

"Come on, Hannibal, you don't already have plans do you?" Jean asked.

"Actually yes, I'm having dinner with the director of The Creature from Camp Runamuck, we're in negotiations of my getting the lead role back."

"What about you, Face?" Murdock asked, "You can stay for dinner, can't you?"

"Oh I'd love to, Murdock, but I…" Face was stalled on his explanation when he saw the hurt puppy look on the pilot's face, Murdock was about to swallow his bottom lip, "I'd love to, Murdock, but I've already got a dinner date set and you know how mad Felicia is when she's kept waiting."

Jean reached over and patted Murdock's shoulder sympathetically and told him, "We'll have them over another time, Murdock…hey, maybe we can drop in on B.A. tonight and surprise him."

Murdock perked up and practically floated off the ground, "Yeah, I haven't seen the angry mudsucker for a while, it'll be good to see him again!"

"You see? There you go," Hannibal said as he headed for the door, "We'll see about coming over tomorrow night."

"Yeah, see you later, Murdock," Face waved as he followed Hannibal out the door.

As he closed the door behind him and followed Hannibal down the sidewalk, he told the Colonel, "I _hate_ Christmas shopping at this time of day, everybody and his brother is out and about."

"Yeah, but it's the only time we can when Murdock's not going to be with us," Hannibal pointed out, "So we better take advantage of it."

"Yeah yeah," Face grumbled, "But we're never going to be able to find a place to park."

* * *

As it turned out, getting a parking spot wasn't as much trouble as he'd thought, but getting into the store without being run over by somebody else was another story altogether. Hannibal wasn't with him, he'd decided to take his business to another store on the block, leaving Face to fend for himself in the toy shop, and one glance at the place made him very grateful he didn't have Murdock with him. Knowing the pilot as well as Face did, he'd probably run around touching everything and trying out anything with a button on it and probably want one or two of everything.

He had to admit, they were making toys a lot snazzier than they did when he was a kid: he looked over all the action figures, from G.I. Joe to Star Wars to Indiana Jones, he also saw the talking teddy bears that gave him a slight case of the creeps when the eyes and mouth moved. And of course any toy store would cash in on merchandise from any hit TV show or movie, but in California, and in Hollywood especially it was even worse: there was everything from stuffed E.T. dolls to MacGyver motorcycles, Inspector Gadgetmobiles, Rambo action figures and Gizmo dolls, there were even still some Battlestar Galactica Cylon action figures being sold there.

One thing he could not find were the airplanes, he managed to find one of the people working at the store and asked for some help; the worker wasn't quick to lead him to the airplanes and inquired as to what kind of a child he was buying for. Face did a double take and shook his head; _how_ do you explain to somebody that the child you're buying a toy for was 6'1 and almost 40 years old? But, he managed to get around that and finally got the worker to point him in the direction of the remote control airplanes. Apparently that was something else that people were trying to cash in on because there must've been 20 different models to pick from, but he finally found the red German Fokkers. He got it paid for and had it gift wrapped and walked out of the toy shop grinning like he was carrying the secret of the Lost City of Atlantis in the box.

He carried it out to his 'Vette and found a note from Hannibal on the passenger side; it said that he would be busy for a while and not to wait around on him, he'd get a cab back to his apartment when he finished. Face didn't get it but he stuffed the note in his pocket and decided to head for home; though he couldn't help wondering just what Hannibal was going to get for Murdock.

Once Face got back to the place he was currently scamming, he decided against trying to hide Murdock's present there since for one thing, Murdock would be over someday that week and might tear the place apart looking for it, and for another, his most of all were not the most permanent of addresses and it might be a better idea to stash it at Hannibal's apartment. He wound up calling five times and the last time it rang for a minute and a half before Hannibal finally answered; he didn't sound like he'd just gotten in the door though, and Face considered the idea that Hannibal was just having fun screwing with him. He told Hannibal about his idea and the Colonel agreed he could bring the present over to stash it there.

"This ought to be interesting though," Hannibal told him, "Jean just called and said she wants to come over. She just dropped Murdock off at the V.A. because he wanted to visit with Dr. Richter for a while."

Face agreed, "This ought to be _very_ interesting, I wonder what she wants."

He hung up with Hannibal and drove his 'Vette over to Hannibal's apartment, and grunted when he finally opened the door, "3 floors up and you couldn't get an apartment in a building that has an elevator."

Hannibal just smirked and told him, "You're getting soft, Lieutenant." He eyed the brightly wrapped package and asked, "So what'd you get him?"

"Oh it's great, Hannibal, it's a remote control airplane."

Hannibal nodded and replied, "Well, it's something that he doesn't have."

There was a knock at the door, Hannibal went to answer it and Jean came in carrying a package the same size as Face's but in a different wrapping paper. When they saw each other's presents, Jean stopped in her tracks and they both looked at the other package in dread and exchanged a couple of 'Oh no's.

"Don't tell me," Face said, "You got Murdock a present too?"

"Yeah, what'd you get him?" Jean asked.

They both answered simultaneously, "A remote control airplane."

"Oh this is just great," Face groaned, "And I suppose you got him a German Fokker too."

"No," Jean sharply replied with a shake of her head, "I got him the Sopwith Camel biplane with Snoopy."

Face rolled his eyes and let out a sigh of relief, "Well, that takes care of that. Then he can still get both of them."

"Yeah," Jean said as she handed her present to Hannibal who took it and Face's gift to hide somewhere, "But I get the feeling that we're both going to be outdone by one angry mudsucker."

"What do you mean?" Face asked.

"I went by B.A.'s apartment earlier to get Billy's leash for Murdock," Jean told him, "And while I was there I did a little snooping around because I've never really seen his place, and I found a package on the back of the top shelf in his closet, and it's the size of those giant remote control helicopters that they're selling at the same toy store where we got our planes, it's as big as both of these put together."

"B.A.?" Face asked in disbelief, "It couldn't be."

"Hey, Christmas brings out surprises in everybody," Jean said, "Even an angry mudsucker can take a day off from his grumpy disposition, can't he?"

"But still, why would B.A. do that?" Face asked.

"Because he likes Murdock, even if he'll never admit it," Jean said, "Besides, there's no name on it, no tag saying that it's from anyone, so it wouldn't surprise me if he just plans to drop it in with the rest of the presents anonymously and let Murdock wrack his brain trying to figure out where it came from. And of course if Murdock ever puts the pieces together, B.A. will deny everything and say he's crazy, just as he always does."

"Have to admit, it's a good idea," Hannibal told Face.

Face shrugged and said, "We'll see."

"Hey Face," Jean said, "What do you think Murdock's going to get you guys for Christmas?"

"Murdock? Who knows? I mean we're talking about a guy who runs around in cut up bed sheets and talks to his feet all day," Face reminded her, "There's no telling with that guy."

"You can say that again," she replied.

* * *

The next day was Jean's day off from work, but she still wasn't able to sleep in because Murdock got her up early jumping on the bed like a monkey, trying to get her opinion on what he should get the guys for Christmas. He stressed the fact that with this being his first Christmas out of the V.A. that he wanted to really do something special to make it memorable; and Jean listened to all of this with one eye half open and her head nodding more out of reflex than actually listening to him.

"Murdock," she said as she swung her head back and hit the pillows, "Whatever you get them will be fine, you know that."

"I know but I don't want to settle for just anything, I want it to be something _amazing_."

Jean chuckled through a closed mouth, then opened it slightly to reply, "Murdock, nothing you do is ever mediocre anyway, so why worry about it?"

"Well I don't expect you to understand," he said, "But this is the first time since I was living with my grandparents that I'll be spending Christmas in _this_ country, _out_ of the hospital, and _with_ my new family. I want to do something spectacular for it."

Jean nodded again from where she lay, then she opened her eyes and said, "Alright, I'll tell you what, since this is my first Christmas in L.A. I have to go out later and get some new Christmas decorations, you can come and while we're out we'll take a look around and see if we can't find something for the others. And if there _is_ something that's good enough for them, it'll pop out at you when you see it, right? You've got a sixth sense about these things, right?"

Murdock nodded anxiously.

"Alright, so you see, we'll go shopping later and get the whole thing settled," Jean calmly told him, and then added, "Now go back to sleep!"

He lay back down beside her, but he didn't go to sleep, instead he turned over on his side, somewhat hovering over her as he watched her close her eyes. A few seconds passed and he said to her, "Jean."

"What?" she asked with her eyes still closed.

"Jean."

"What?"

"Jean?"

"What! What? What is it, Murdock, WHAT!?" Jean shot up screaming.

Murdock managed to resist the urge to start laughing though he couldn't hide the humorous smirk on his face. He quickly became somber though and said, "I need to talk to somebody."

Jean turned and looked back at him, "What about?"

"What…" he sat up in the bed and asked her, "What do you think makes people the way they are? I mean why do you think so many people are bloodthirsty barbarians, do you think it's hereditary or does something _make_ them that way?"

Jean also sat up but couldn't bring both of her eyes to open fully, "I get the feeling I'm about to get a history lesson here, you talking about back in Vietnam?"

"Well, for lack of a better example, yes," he said.

Jean shook her head, "I don't know, Murdock…I've tried to figure it out myself, I mean people like us, we do it out of necessity, but we don't go into overkill, other people they drag out torture and death as long as they can because they enjoy watching their victims suffer…I can't figure out what would make _anybody_ like that, war or no war."

"You know," Murdock said, "Back in World War I, there was a ceasefire between the British and the German soldiers."

"I remember," Jean said as she pulled the covers up, "The Christmas Truce."

Murdock nodded and replied, "I never could figure it out if they were able to do it once, why couldn't they do it again?"

"Well by the time of the second war, it was a whole other ballgame, everybody was more of a cutthroat, they found new and more fantastic ways to kill people and torture them," Jean said, "And it's just progressed on that from every war afterwards. Face it, Murdock, the majority of the human race is a miserable excuse for human beings, no matter where you look: Germany, Korea, Russia, Croatia, Japan, Vietnam, even here in America we must have 100 million jerks who we'd be better off bombing the daylights out of, and we don't, why? Because we're so civilized, that's why we're not allowed to do it, but they're just a bunch of rampaging animals that should be put down like killer dogs because they have no respect for any life, human or otherwise, _except_ their own."

"And that's where we come in," Murdock said proudly, "Have cause, will travel."

Jean smiled tiredly and said, "We need more of you guys, that's the only way humanity's going to survive."

"Well that may be true, but in the meantime I think four of us do just fine," he told her.

* * *

By the time they got home that afternoon, Jean was exhausted and as soon as she dropped her bags onto the floor, she likewise fell back on the couch and was ready to succumb to unconsciousness. She heard Murdock come into the room, and then heard him trip on something, and then the next thing she knew, there was a sudden 50 pounds pressing on her legs; she opened her eyes and saw the new tool box Murdock had gotten for B.A., filled to the brim with new tools, had landed on her.

"Get off me!" she told him as she pushed the metal toolbox off her knees and it made a crash landing on the floor.

Murdock let out a strained groan and said, "Sorry about that, Saint."

Jean sighed and remarked, "It's alright…now where are you going to put that thing so B.A. won't find it when they come over to visit? Hey! They're supposed to come over for dinner tonight, so where're you going to hide it?"

"I got the perfect place," Murdock told her, "Up in the game room, he's not going to go in there."

"True," Jean said, "Somehow he doesn't strike me as a Tron type of person."

"I just wish I could've found something for Face and Hannibal though," Murdock said as he shook his head.

"It's still early, you'll think of something," Jean told him, and reached out to pick up one of the bags she brought in, "Alright, let's see what all we've got."

Murdock grabbed her other arm and pulled her up into a sitting position and sat down beside her. They had two bags full of lights, tinsel garlands and other Christmas ornaments for the house. There were also a couple bags of groceries, one for the contents of dinner, and the others for, at Murdocks' insistence, making fruitcake and Christmas cookies.

"Fruitcake for the fruitcake," Jean murmured, and she told Murdock, "Well, as it turns out I _do_ know one recipe that doesn't manufacture multicolored rubber bricks. Though I gotta tell you, I still feel weird about being away from my mom this Christmas."

Murdock reached over and gripped her shoulder sympathetically.

"But I'll tell you," she added, "If I have to spend it with somebody else I think I found the closest second there is."

Murdock smiled in response.

"Though that reminds me of something," she told him, "You keep going on about what to get Hannibal and Face and B.A…what do _you_ want for Christmas?"

He thought about it for a minute and finally said, "I don't know, as far as I can tell, I've already got everything I need."

* * *

As planned, Hannibal and Face came to dinner, but they brought the unfortunate news that B.A. wouldn't be joining them since he didn't trust anything that Murdock would cook. The Colonel and Lieutenant proved they were more willing to try it, though they noticed Face came prepared with a roll of antacids. Jean pretended to be insulted and threatened never to cook for company again, Face took the lid off one pan, got a nose full and commented, "No loss there."

All the same, everybody grabbed a pan or a bowl and took the food out to the dining room table and made themselves at home.

"So Murdock," Hannibal said over dinner, "How do you like your new arcade?"

"Oh it's _fantastic_, Hannibal!" he said, "You'll have to try it sometime, it is simply unbelievable, and she's right, you don't need any quarters for them."

"I figure with the frequent flyer miles he'll get on those games," Jean explained, "They'll have themselves paid off within a few months anyway. Incidentally, Murdock, did you ever cause any of the ones at the V.A. to ever short out or explode?"

"Not as I can recall," he answered.

Face rolled his eyes at the pilot's remark.

Once dinner was over, Face was drafted to help with the dishes, and once again he moaned and groaned the entire time about getting dishpan hands, to which Jean only told him, "Suck it up, I do this every night."

"Yeah but you…" he restrained himself from saying what he was thinking and instead said, "You are a stunt person, I rely heavily on my appearance to come by what we need on our missions, that includes smooth, unblemished skin and…"

"Spare me, pretty boy," Jean told him, "Besides your hands were already callused from all your work in the army, a little suds work ain't gonna kill you."

Hannibal laughed and said, "You know Face, you two could work well together."

Face groaned and replied, "You're not serious."

"Well that's the thing about me, you just never know," Hannibal told him.

After the dishes were done, Face collapsed on the couch and fell into a semi-unconscious slumber, though that didn't stop Murdock from talking to him the whole time while he watched TV. Hannibal followed Jean into the kitchen and took a detour into the laundry room; he stayed in the doorway as she opened the dryer and took a batch of clothes out to fold.

"So how've things been going here between the two of you?" Hannibal asked her.

"Oh, can't complain," Jean said, "Some days are good, some days are better, I doubt it's anything that you all haven't been through with him."

Hannibal shrugged and replied, "Maybe. Of course we've all had years of experience with him."

"Yeah well, I'll admit there are still plenty of surprises with him," Jean said, and as if to demonstrate, she pulled a pair of men's bikini briefs with cherries and bananas on them out of the dryer and held them up for him to see.

Hannibal threw his head back laughing.

* * *

Hannibal had gone to see B.A. at his place the next morning, he hadn't said why he was coming over, and even once he was there he didn't say why he had come. He just smoked his cigar and paced around the room, B.A. guessed that he was thinking something to himself, that part was a safe bet but just what it was was anybody's guess.

"Hannibal," B.A. finally said, "Is there a particular reason you had to come over here so early or is this just another one of your jokes that ain't funny?"

"B.A., I need your help with something," Hannibal said, "I've been trying to think of what to get Murdock for Christmas."

"Easy," B.A. snorted, "A one way ticket back to the crazy hospital."

Hannibal ignored his comment and said, "You remember that decoder ring Murdock had right after he got committed to the V.A.? And he lost it when we went over to Kafiristan in '73?"

B.A. nodded, "Fool lost it when we went over to liberate that stupid colonel out of the prison."

"I've been checking some second hand shops trying to find a replacement one to get him but with no luck," Hannibal said, "You can't find those things anymore."

"So watchu need my help for?" B.A. asked.

Hannibal looked at him knowingly and flashed one of his trademark grins, "Well B.A., you're good at building things."

B.A. looked like he might fall off the couch, "You want me to make that sucker a new ring?"

"Well, a rough facsimile of it," Hannibal replied, "I know it would mean a lot to him and _you_ do know a lot about jewelry of the showoff variety."

B.A. grunted and rolled his eyes, "Aw man, Hannibal, why do I let you talk me into these things?"

"That's the spirit, B.A.," Hannibal beamed, "Incidentally, have _you_ gotten anything for Murdock for Christmas?"

"Why would I?" B.A. asked as he got up and headed to the kitchen, "Only thing that crazy fool ever gives me is headaches."

"I see…" Hannibal nonchalantly replied, "So if I were to take a quick peek in your closet I wouldn't find a 24 inch remote control camouflage Huey chopper, would I?"

B.A. stopped and turned around on one foot and glared at Hannibal in shock and disbelief.

"Don't worry, Sergeant, it'll be our little secret," Hannibal said with a chuckle.


	3. Chapter 3

Another day another dollar, or in Jean's case, 400. $2000 a week wasn't a bad deal for a single woman who mainly lived alone and whose expenses only came up periodically. But Hannibal hadn't been at work that day, and neither had Murdock, and that struck her as odd. During her break she'd tried calling Hannibal's apartment but there wasn't any answer. She didn't get an answer from B.A.'s apartment or Face's place either, of course it could mean anything, but she decided to try looking around and see if she could find them. Once she'd gotten her things dropped off at the house she'd gotten into her car and drove around to some of the places that she knew the A-Team would frequent.

After a while of turning up empty handed at every turn, figuring that maybe they were working over a new client, Jean decided to head to Mr. Lee's Laundry even though she knew the real Mr. Lee, an Irishman named Lee Bowman, would be working there at this time of the day, and see if maybe they were somewhere close by. She parked her car in the alley behind the laundry and walked around the corner to take a peek. She heard a series of gunshots ring out and when she stuck her head out to see what was going on, almost got knocked down when the four of them ran past her; in the commotion they didn't see her and they fired their weapons back at whoever had been shooting at them. Before she could ask anybody where the fire was, somebody ran into her and they both got knocked down. Jean craned her head to the front to see who hit her and it was somebody she had not been too eager to see again.

"Decker!" she exclaimed in disbelief.

The feeling was entirely mutual, once Decker realized who he'd slammed into, he got a look on his face like he was about to eat a live octopus. "Oh no, not you again!"

"Yeah, me again," Jean said, and that was all she was able to get out because the next thing she knew, Decker had grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and was dragging her alongside him over to his car and he shoved her in the middle of the front seat, and as he got in he told Crane to floor it. Their little collision had bought the A-Team time enough to get to their van and make a quick getaway, even if it was with the army on their heels.

"You're not going to get in my way this time," Decker told Jean, "And I'm going to make sure you can't possibly assist the A-Team in eluding us."

"Oh I would never dream of doing something like that," Jean dryly replied.

"Shut up," Decker ordered.

Jean cocked her head to the side and folded her arms against her chest and tried to position herself in the center of the seat, but as the car swerved and slammed around, she got thrown first against Crane and then against Decker, like a noisemaker paddle having its two metal knockers slam against it.

"Ain't seen you around in a while, Roddy," she told him, "What's the matter, did a bag of kittens need drowning while we were out?"

"Be quiet," he warned her.

"So tell me, Roddy," she said, ignoring his warning, "How did you manage to find them this time, were they nice enough to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for you to follow?"

Decker kept his eyes straight ahead and told her in his usual cold, hard tone, "Miss Rhodes, I would advise you to be quiet before I forget my position and knock you cold."

"Pal," Jean spat, "I've had your little green men beat me half to death once before, I can take you _and_ your servant boy here blindfolded."

Crane glared at her through one eye but otherwise kept his attention to the road ahead and the chase that ensued, "Colonel, I see them, half a mile dead ahead."

"Great," Decker suddenly got a sickening grin on his face, and Jean took notice of this and subtly leaned forward and put her hand down into her boot. Decker reached for the radio, picked it up and said, "Calling all units this is Colonel Deck…" _BANG!_

Crane felt the blood pounding in his right ear and he lost control of the car for a few seconds, Decker had blood pouring out of his left ear and he was letting off with a whole string of obscenities and vulgarities as he assessed what had happened. The car's radio had exploded with the help of a bullet, and Jean had the Browning automatic responsible in her hand and resting calmly on her lap; her own eyes looking dead like a shark's and she looked down at the destroyed radio.

"You shot the radio!" Decker screamed at her in disbelief, "You shot the radio? Are you crazy?"

Jean looked at him and answered bluntly, "Well _of course_ I'm crazy, I was married to the V.A.'s psychiatric mascot for 3 months, dummy!"

She turned her attention to the man driving and told him, "Crane, pull over."

Through the corner of his eye, Crane saw her gun aimed very subtly at Decker, and he wasn't willing to take the chance. He stepped on the brakes and the car dragged to a stop. Jean crawled over Crane to get out of the car and waved them off, then as she took a step back, she aimed her gun and promptly blew two holes into the gas tank. Her ears burnt with Decker's choice words as she walked back to her own car. She half expected him to chase her but she didn't think he'd be dumb enough to try it since she still had 10 bullets in her gun and had already fired it once just two inches from where he sat.

* * *

"What were you thinking?" Hannibal asked her when she finally caught up with him that night.

Jean rolled her eyes and pressed her face into the back of the chair she was sitting backwards on. "He shoved me in the car, Hannibal, it wasn't my choice to go anywhere with him."

"I'm not talking about that," he told her.

"Yeah, but Hannibal, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity," Jean said, "Any other time I'll be in one of those cars with Decker, one of us is either going to be in the backseat behind that grid, or in the trunk, and I always wanted to try something like that. The only thing that would've made me happier would be to throw them out of the car and take it for myself."

Hannibal seemed to think over what she said for a minute before responding, "Well, I guess I can't be too mad at you, after all you left Decker with no radio, no backup and no way to chase after anybody. I appreciate what you did, Jean, but don't go making a habit of it."

Jean smiled sheepishly like she was getting lectured by her father for staying out late. "No problem, I can't stand being around that guy."

Hannibal chuckled and as she stood up he hugged her lightly.

"Incidentally, before I blew up the radio I heard something about you being in pursuit of another car, so who were you chasing after today?" Jean asked, "Or was it just coincidence that you two were hot rodding down that street at the same time?"

"Not coincidence," Hannibal told her, "We walked in on some goon trying to murder a new client of ours."

"What?" Jean asked.

Hannibal nodded, "Sure, somebody found out a woman was trying to hire us, followed her into the ladies' room and tried to strangle her to death. Fortunately we came along just in time."

"And you're sure she's safe now?" she asked.

"Well right now it's merely a precaution, but B.A. and Face are staying at her house tonight keeping an eye on things, but after what we did to that guy, I doubt he'll be any too eager to attempt a repeat performance."

"And Murdock's staying at Face's house tonight incase they need to contact him, right?" Jean asked.

"That's right," Hannibal answered, "Though I doubt it'll be necessary."

"What's the mission?" Jean asked as she picked up a bottle of gin on his table and took the lid off.

"Oh it's very simple," Hannibal said as he sat down next to her, "This woman is being threatened by her ex-husband who just happens to be very rich and very powerful and to have a whole army of hired goons at his disposal who can shut down any attempt to get help, he's bought off the cops, the judges, everybody, except us, the one justice system that can't be bought."

Jean poured them each a drink and asked Hannibal, "Does this woman have any money to afford your fees?"

"This woman," Hannibal repeated, "Is a divorced woman who wasn't entitled to any of her husband's money, with two kids to raise and two jobs to work that each fare little better than minimum wage."

"So that's a no," Jean said as she lifted her glass, "So why take the case?"

"I like women," Hannibal said as he clinked his glass with hers, "I like mothers, I like children, I like to see children grow up with their mothers, and I _don't_ like money grubbing, bloodthirsty murderous sons of…" Jean raised her gaze to look at him amusedly and her eyebrows lifted slightly in anticipation of the word that never came, "You know as well as I do that not every case we take is about money."

"But that doesn't stop you from charging a hundred grand each time," Jean replied.

Hannibal laughed and said, "Only when we know we can get it."

Jean poured them each another drink, after which she said, "Alright, so let's talk business. You don't ordinarily hire yourselves out to just handle domestic disputes but it doesn't sound like this guy could have any ulterior motive other than he's just a violent schizo, which the world is full of, especially in the ex-husband category. So where does this dame live, how far are you going and how long do you anticipate to be on the job?"

"Oh," Hannibal said over the new cigar he put in his mouth, and checked his watch, "They're both very close by, I'd say 3 days tops and we'll be back. Look, since Murdock's at Face's for the night, why don't you stay here tonight? I don't like the idea of you being all alone in that house at night."

"Aw Hannibal, I'm just as safe at home at night as I am in the daytime," she said.

"I know, I don't like that either," Hannibal told her.

"Hannibal, nothing bad has _ever_ happened to me in my own home," she reminded him.

"I still don't like it," he said, "I know you can hold your own better than most, but you're still safer with someone else around."

"Then why," Jean asked him, "Do _you_ live alone?"

He laughed and replied, "Well you've got me there…come on, kid, what do you say?"

Jean nodded and said, "Sure, I'll stay." Already her words were starting to drawl and her eyes were starting to droop. But she was still alert enough to say to him, "Hannibal, Murdock's having a very hard time trying to figure out what to get you for Christmas, and it means a lot to him to get it right."

Hannibal sat across from her at the table, deeply inhaling his cigar and the small wisps of smoke came out his nose as he took in what she said, giving him a strong sudden resemblance to a dragon. He truly looked surprised by this little piece of news.

"Oh Murdock doesn't have to do that," he said.

"Yes he does," Jean said, "You have no idea what it means to him to do this, think about it, Hannibal, first he spent Christmas in Vietnam, and then in the mental hospital for over a decade…" she looked down at the table as she tried to figure out how to explain it to Hannibal, "You see, it's not just enough for him to be out, to be on the outside for Christmas this year, as a newly found sane person, he really wants to do something to make it memorable. So if you could come up with something that he could get you, you have no idea how relieved he would be to know what to get you."

Hannibal scratched the top of his head with one finger while he managed to keep the hold on his cigar with the rest of the fingers on that hand, "I'll have to think about it."

"Well believe me, Hannibal, whatever you ask him for, he can get it," Jean told him, "And I can assure you, he won't need my help if that's any consolation."

"What's he getting for Face and B.A.?" Hannibal asked.

"Face he hasn't figured out yet, but B.A. he got him a new set of tools, he said it made the most sense since something's always being left behind on a job somewhere," Jean said.

"True," he agreed.

"Which reminds me, Hannibal," she said, "What're _you_ getting Murdock for Christmas?"

"That's going to be a surprise," he told her.

Jean smiled grimly and said, "Good thing Murdock loves surprises."

* * *

Hannibal woke up to find Jean hovering over him in the dark, poking him and whispering, "Hannibal, can I talk to you?"

It was still dark and Hannibal fumbled around to find his alarm clock and saw that it was going on 2 in the morning. "What's the matter?"

"I can't sleep," she said.

Hannibal grumbled something to himself and said, "Murdock certainly picked the perfect woman to marry, whenever he stays here he can't sleep either and has to keep me up half the night. Alright…" he pulled the covers back and patted the vacant spot and told her, "Get in and tell me what's on your mind, tell me why I'm not getting any sleep tonight."

Jean climbed in beside him and said, "I've been thinking about something. Now I know that you guys are all weapons experts and I know you are perfectly capable of killing somebody, I saw you do it once before."

Hannibal remembered. "And I don't regret it," he told her.

Jean nodded, "I know…but I was just thinking about something, you guys go into a fight, you take machine guns, assault rifles, handguns, hand grenades, bazookas, all of that stuff…but I've noticed that one thing none of you ever carries into a battle, are knives. I'm guessing that's because their purpose would be a much more deadly one; when you shoot at people it's mainly just to scare them, you don't try to hit them, you don't kill people with that, but if you pulled a blade on somebody, then it would become serious, it would become real and somebody would wind up dead."

Hannibal said nothing at first, only stared at her like a content cat, and finally he said to her, "Good observation."

"But," Jean added, "Does that mean that you don't carry any _at all_, or just not so anyone else could see?"

"What do you think?" Hannibal challenged her.

"I think you don't take any chances," she answered, "I think you could just as likely kill somebody with your bare hands but in a pinch you would also have no problem slitting their throat if the situation called for it. And I also think you could probably find a way to do it with whatever was on hand but would probably prefer to supply your own blade for the job."

He smiled at her and replied, "Smart kid."

"Hannibal, there's something else I was thinking about," Jean said, "Now I know that the ideal way to travel in a plane is with B.A. out cold and blissfully unaware of his surroundings, but do you guys ever keep plain paralytics on hand as a last resort when you run out of his knockout drugs?"

"Can't say as we have," he said, "The best way to travel with B.A. in a plane is for him to be quiet, if we did that he'd be threatening to kill us the whole time we were up in the air, he just wouldn't be able to do anything about it. That one never occurred to us though I _could_ see us having some use for them."

"Like when Decker comes around again," Jean suggested.

"Exactly," he told her, "Now that I think of it, I do think that would be fun, he can scream his head off all he wants but he can't move to do anything about what we're doing to him." He got a devilish grin on his face as he considered the possibility and said, "Yes…that _could_ be a fun thing to try next time with our old pal Decker."

He turned to Jean and saw that she had fallen asleep laying alongside him. He reached over, pulled the covers up on her, patted her head softly and whispered, "Goodnight, kid."

* * *

Hannibal had said the new mission would take 3 days at most, instead it took almost 5; during which they had no contact with Jean or vice versa, but she knew that they would do whatever had to be done, and they would be back. They were worse than cockroaches, it was impossible to get rid of the A-Team.

While they were gone, she took it as a perfect opportunity to get some Christmas shopping done for both she and Murdock; before they left, Murdock had left her with some money and a list of a few ideas he had what to get the others. So while he was off with them tarring and feathering a battering tycoon, or whatever the hell they were doing, she tried getting the items on his list. She'd also tried her own hand at picking up things that the Team might like; for Hannibal she'd picked up a $30 bottle of gin, Face's cologne that Murdock requested cost about the same, B.A.'s present was easy to wrap but it wouldn't keep under the tree, so until Christmas she kept 5 pounds of T-bone steaks in the big chest freezer in the back room behind the kitchen. Murdock hadn't left any suggestions for what to get him so Jean played that one by ear; for him she got a few new action comics and a new pair of black Chuck Taylors since his were old, faded, and seeing even more excessive wear from him drying them in the oven regularly.

On the 5th day, Jean had gotten a call from Murdock that they were finished with the mission and would be back before sundown, all that was left was to wait. She ran a few errands that afternoon and then realized that for some reason she was driving the route that led to the Federal Building. Well, she thought about it and decided she might as well make sure Decker was on his toes _but_ without the A-Team on his radar. She hated to admit it but she was glad Decker was back at work and out of the hospital; it was so easy to mess with him and she loved to do it any time she had a chance. He could rant and rave all he wanted but the truth of the matter was he didn't have anything concrete that he could use to hold against her for helping the A-Team.

Jean pulled up at the building at the same time she saw several MPs rushing out and to their cars, but she noticed that Decker wasn't leading this parade. She tried to get up to the front doors and catch somebody who knew what was going on to find out why not, but all she got was knocked back by somebody who wore the brass to suggest he was in the one in charge. She ran up behind the man, grabbed him by the arm and jerked him back and demanded to know, "Who the hell are you and where's Colonel Decker?"

The man who looked to be somewhere in his 50s and with a bad complexion that made Decker look like Jack LaLanne in his prime, didn't take well to her interrupting him and he snarled, "Decker has been transferred out due to his incompetency, _my_ name is Colonel Briggs, and if you don't get out of my way I'll have you thrown in jail for aiding and abetting the escape of the A-Team, now get out of my way!" and he hit her so hard he knocked her down on the pavement.

At that moment every nerve in her body went numb, only to be replaced a moment later by a blinding pain that spread from the top of her head all the way down her back. She didn't know how long she lay on the ground writhing in pain, it was only when she felt somebody moving her that she realized her eyes were closed; opening them up she was able to see who had grabbed her and turned her over.

"Decker," she groaned quietly, "Fancy running int' you here…" the pins and needles in her back and neck suddenly became too much and she slumped forward.

Decker caught her and pulled her to her feet, "Come on, Rhodes, get up, what happened to you?"

"I think you' been replaced," she murmured as she fell against him.

She felt one of Decker's arms around her back and she heard him grunt, "Come on, Crane, let's get her to the car."

Déjà vu. Once again the three of them were all piled into the front of Decker's sedan, but this time he was telling Crane to get them to a hospital. Jean didn't know what good that would do but right now she was desperate for anything to end the pain. She could hear Decker asking her again what happened, but she couldn't bring herself to answer. One time as a kid she had swallowed a large jawbreaker, and she didn't choke on it but it was jagged against her throat and hurt the entire way down, and right now her whole body felt the same way, anything that counted anyway: back, ribs, chest, stomach, it all felt the same and it was hurting her to breathe. It all felt like somebody had filled a bag with marbles and was using it as a hammer to beat every inch of her body. Maybe the pain was just making her delusional, but she would almost swear she could hear Decker asking, "Just where the hell is the A-Team when they're actually needed?"

Jean forced her eyes open and saw him pick up the radio before it hit him he didn't know who the hell he was calling. She nudged him to get his attention and told him, "Here Decker, let me," and she adjusted the radio's settings to tune it out of the army's frequency, and to the radio in the van and she grabbed the microphone from him and said into it, "Hannibal, it's Jean…I'm being taken to the hospital, I've been in…some kind of accident."

Hannibal's voice came through loud and clear back on the radio, but Jean couldn't make out what he was saying, instead she handed it to Decker and let him explain; she didn't know why she had done it, this was the _last_ thing that the Team needed because she knew Decker would be waiting for them when and if they _did_ come to the hospital. But for some reason she'd had a feeling that it had to be done anyway; no matter, even if Decker did try catching them, he would fail, they would get away, they always got away, and if she had to rise up from her deathbed to help see to it, so be it. Decker was usually a hard-as-nails man with less visible emotion than the Terminator, and it was never easy to tell what was going through his mind, though Jean managed momentarily to succeed in scaring the hell out of him when she leaned into him and wrapped her arm around his chest to try and keep herself steady as she blacked out and collapsed against him.

* * *

It seemed official; Murdock couldn't possibly be the only one of them who was crazy. The rest of them had to have lost their minds as well, it was the only way to logically explain what was going on. They were being chased by half a dozen army cars but Decker didn't seem to be leading the way this time. That in itself hadn't seemed too weird but they weren't given much time to think about it, because then Decker was coming through on their radio and talking to them. They were still dodging enemy fire from the goon squad behind them and everybody was trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Murdock and Face took the offensive and threw the back doors open to fire back at the stampeding cars and managed to take out a few windshields and a few front tires and cause one hell of a domino effect that left all the MPs rear ending each other as they skidded and crashed.

"Decker, are you still there?" Hannibal asked into the radio once all the commotion had died down.

"Yes, Smith, and you heard me right," he replied.

Hannibal considered his next words carefully, he didn't want to do anything that might give them away or set them up. "What are you doing with Jean?"

"Just come to the hospital, Smith," Decker told him, "You'll find out why when you get here."

"Decker," Hannibal said, "Remember where you are, in America hospitals are supposed to be places of rest and quiet, so let's make it interesting, no crossfire, what do you say?"

"You," Decker responded, "Are preaching to the choir, Smith."

"Which hospital?" he asked.

Decker gave him the location of the nearest hospital and Hannibal relayed the message to B.A.

"I don't like it, man," B.A. told him, "Decker's up to something, he's got to be."

"One thing I don't get," Face said, "Why _wasn't_ he with that little military jamboree back there?"

"We'll find out when we get there," Hannibal said, "Face, get every handgun out of storage back there, and make sure they're loaded. I'm inclined to trust Decker as far as I can throw him and if we have to make an emergency exit with a few holes in the wall, we will, but we're not going in empty handed incase this is another ploy of his to draw us in."

Hannibal turned to see the others in back but the first thing he saw was the murderous glare on Murdock's face as he sat on his hands and feet and seemed to be trying to restrain himself. "Colonel," he growled through gritted teeth, "If he did _anything_ to hurt her…"

Hannibal nodded sympathetically and placed a hand on the pilot's shoulder and told him, "I know how you feel, Murdock, but try and calm yourself, if Decker had done anything to Jean, he wouldn't be taking her to the hospital in the first place."

After several minutes, they pulled up in front of the hospital and got out and prepared to go in. Face looked up at the building which was he guessed close to 20 stories tall and said to himself, "Why do I suddenly feel like the Ghostbusters about to face off with the giant marshmallow man?"

He shook the feeling off and joined the others as they made their way through the hospital parking lot and in through the front doors. Hannibal went to the front desk and explained that they were Jean Rhodes' family and wanted to know what room she was in. When they got the room number they went to the elevator and took it up to the 3rd floor.

"Get ready," Hannibal told the others as they came to the door and stepped inside.

Crane and Decker were there waiting for them, but Hannibal was quick to notice it was without their weapons drawn and without any backup. He looked past them and saw somebody in the hospital bed; it may have been Jean but she was turned over facedown and had the sheet pulled up high on her.

"What happened?" Murdock asked as he pushed his way to the front, he got in Decker's face and demanded to know, "What did you do to her!?"

"I didn't do anything," Decker told him, as Hannibal slipped past both of them and went over to the bed and pulled the sheet down and Jean's shirt up to examine the damage, "Don't even think about blaming this on me!"

"Then what _did_ happen to her?" Hannibal asked as he looked over to the other colonel in the room. He pointed at Jean and asked, "What made this big bruise on her back?"

"That's what we're waiting to find out," Crane explained, "The doctors put her under before she could tell anybody what happened."

"Alright, so how'd you find her?" Face asked.

"You won't believe him even if he told you," Crane shook his head.

"Something's wrong," Hannibal said as he went back over to them, he looked to Decker and asked him, "Why the sudden humanity, Decker? I'd think you'd be thrilled to have all of us delivered to you like a barrel of fish to shoot at."

"At another time and another place, you have no idea," Decker told him, "But that doesn't matter much anymore, seeing as how I've been replaced."

"What?" the A-Team asked.

Decker nodded slowly, obviously this was as unpleasant for him as a root canal, slowly and painfully he explained to Hannibal, "I followed a lead that you were over in Nevada as a stunt actor on some cheap B-picture being filmed out there, I find out it's a fluke, and when I get back here I find out that due to my inability to catch you and bring you in, somebody else has been brought in to take over my position. Apparently the Generals in charge think he's more qualified to catch you than I am."

"Who's that?" Face asked.

"Colonel Briggs."

"Oh _him_ again," Murdock said, and gnashed his teeth together and shook his head as he added in a terrible James Cagney impersonation, "The dirty rat."

"We've dealt with Briggs once before," Hannibal told Decker, "I seem to recall he replaced you another time."

"Well," Decker told Hannibal, "This time it's official, and permanent."

"Oh no, that'll never work," Murdock groaned, "What're we going to do without a clown in our lives?"

The sudden sound from the bed startled everybody and drew their attention. Jean grumbled something in her drug induced sleep and tried to turn over but without success.

"Murdock," Hannibal said to the Captain, "Why don't you go over and stay with her for a while?"

He nodded, "Sure thing, Colonel." He went over to the bed and hoisted himself up on it alongside Jean. She remained on her stomach with her face buried in a pillow, but it didn't stop him from laying down beside her and talking to her, even though she didn't respond.

"Hey come on, sweetheart, why don't you open those pretty blue eyes for me, huh? Everybody's here waiting to see you, Hannibal and Face and B.A….okay, so Decker's here too but don't hold that against us," he said.

"What did they give her?" Face inquired.

"Never mind that, what did the doctors say?" Hannibal asked.

"They're still going over some tests to check for brain damage or anything like that," Crane explained, "All they found so far is some skinned spots, a few bruises, said something about some pinched nerves."

Hannibal was shaking his head, "You don't sedate a person for that."

"Well either _something_ happened to her, or she's been playing both of us for a couple of idiots this whole time," Decker told him.

"What do you mean?" Murdock asked, feigning shock and disbelief, "You mean to insinuate that my wife would try tricking you? Why she'd never, she's the most honest person who ever lived."

"Save it, Murdock," Hannibal advised him.

"Well when can we get her out of here?" Murdock wanted to know, "You know she gets violent when she wakes up in a white room with an adjustable bed and people in white coats around."

"Wait a minute, just hold it," Face said, "Just wait a minute, Hannibal, do you think that Briggs is the one who did this to her?"

"That might just explain it," Decker said, "We found her on the sidewalk outside the Federal Building when we got back from that wild goose chase in Nevada."

"Well what was she doing there?" B.A. asked.

"We'll have to wait for her to tell us that," Hannibal said, then returning his attention to Decker he added, "Well Roderick, until she _does_ tell us what happened, I think we've got a long wait ahead of us, I hope you brought a deck of cards. In the meantime," he made sure he had Decker's attention as he said, "I think we need to put our heads together and find a way to get Briggs drummed out and get you reinstated."

Decker look like he could've been knocked down with a feather, "Now _why_ would you want to do that, Smith?"

"Oh come on, Roderick, we go back," Hannibal said with a smirk, "We've got history."

"You two are like an old married couple," Murdock suggested.

"Thanks, Murdock," Hannibal dryly replied, and added to Decker, "I'll give you this much, you're a lot more fun outrunning than Lynch ever was, and from what I've seen of this guy Briggs, I don't like him either, and I won't condone having to adjust to a new Colonel every time the Army thinks its men are falling down on the job just because of their stupid political pressure. When you get down to it, Decker, you know you're never going to catch us, we'll always find a way out, but in the meantime why give up the chase? Where would the fun be in that?"

Murdock looked over to Face and whispered, "Psst, psst!" Face caught on and went over to the bed to see what Murdock wanted, Murdock whispered to him, "What's going on here, Facey?"

"Well you wanted a Christmas truce," Face said, "Maybe we're going to get one."

Murdock looked up to the ceiling and said, "That would be nice," and crossed his fingers on both hands.

* * *

Murdock checked his watch again. Two hours and Jean still hadn't woken up, hadn't even moved, periodically he checked to make sure she was still breathing. The doctors had come in and given the news that no major damage was found, just a lot of heavy bruising, some muscles pulled out of place, some nerves pinched too tight, and all that typical jibber-jabber of taking it easy for the next few days. Once Jean woke up they were going to get her checked out, but despite the pilot's best attempts to get a rise out of the woman laying next to him, nothing had worked. He'd tried just about everything he could think of; he had exhausted all his usual tricks and gags that would have Face ready to rip his hair out or call in B.A. to strangle the man to shut him up, nothing. He tried talking to her, he tried poking her, he tried getting right in front of her face like a cat, he tried his dog act and whimpered and nudged her with his nose and licked her face, even that hadn't been enough to draw a response out of her.

"Come on, darling, wake up," Murdock said as he ran his hand through her hair, knowing it was a safe place to touch since she hadn't seemed to hit her head too hard in the fall, "Wake up so we can get out of here and get you home, you don't want to spend the night in this place, you know the ghosts are all hiding in the shower just waiting for the sun to go down so they can come out here doing a haunted conga."

"It's not working, Murdock," Face told him, "I don't think she's going to wake up."

"Oh yeah?" Murdock asked as he reached into his jacket pocket, "Well maybe I just need to try switching tactics."

Face didn't ask what Murdock was doing, he saw the pilot take a candy bar out of his pocket and rip open the wrapper; he broke a piece off and held it under Jean's nose. At first nothing happened, but after a few seconds, she picked up on the scent and her eyes started to flutter open. A long groan escaped from her throat as she tried to move, finally managing to pull herself up onto her knees in an awkward sitting position.

"Welcome back, Saint," Murdock said as he gave her the candy.

"Murdock, what's going on, what happened?" Jean asked.

Before he could answer, they heard the door open and Hannibal, B.A., Decker and Crane stepped into the room.

"What are _they_ doing here?" Jean asked.

"Jean," Hannibal went over to the bed, "Do you remember who hit you?"

"Yes," Jean said as her gaze dropped to the bed, not because she was afraid to face Hannibal but because suddenly her neck didn't have the strength to keep her head up, "I went to the Federal Building when I heard the MPs moving out, and instead of Decker, another guy in brass came out, his name was Colonel Briggs, he said he was replacing Decker, and he knocked me on the ground, _hard_."

"Why'd he do that?" Face asked.

"For getting in his way of catching you guys," she answered, "But he didn't."

"No, but it's not for lack of trying," Hannibal told her.

Jean managed to pick her head up again and said to him, "Hannibal, I want this guy Briggs, I want his head on a platter."

"That's understandable," Hannibal said.

But it wasn't quite understandable to Decker, and he just had to ask, "Why?"

"Because I don't like Briggs," Jean explained, "Hannibal, give me five minutes with the dirt bag and I'll have his intestines lying on the floor like a pile of spaghetti."

"Easy, Rambo," he told her, "First we have to get you out of this hospital and back home to rest, don't worry, we're going to make sure Briggs doesn't get his butt comfortable behind the desk in Decker's office."

"Fine, but what're you going to do?" Jean asked.

"I'm working on it," Hannibal said. Another thought occurred to him and he turned back to Decker and said, "Incidentally, Roderick, since we're doing you a favor by taking this guy out, how about if we work out a deal?"

"What deal?" Decker wanted to know, the tone of his voice making it obvious he wasn't going to go for it most likely.

"Very simple," Hannibal said, "You know your world history, I think a new Christmas truce is in order, we do this for you and get your old position back, and you hold off on chasing us until after New Year's."

Everybody was surprised, after giving it a moment's consideration, Decker said bluntly, "Alright, Smith, you've got a deal. Now it's just a matter of getting rid of Briggs."

"Leave that to us," Hannibal told him, "We _are_ the professionals in this field."


	4. Chapter 4

"I guess Decker really _does_ only live for the chase," Jean said as Face and Murdock walked her out of the hospital, "Otherwise he would've jumped at the chance of taking you guys in when you came to get me. That would've done wonders for his reinstatement _and_ furthering of his rank I'm sure."

"Oh he's really harmless," Murdock told her, "He knows if he ever caught us, all the fun would go out of his life, it's just like in those Smokey and the Bandit movies."

"Murdock, I'm warning you," Face said, "If you start singing, I'm going to kill you."

"And if he doesn't, I will," Jean added, "After the day I've had I'm in no mood for it."

Face opened the back door to the van and offered to help Jean in but she slapped his hands away and insisted she'd do it herself.

"What's keeping Hannibal?" she asked.

"He's still going over some ideas with Decker on what would be the fastest way to remove Briggs from his newfound title of head pursuer of the A-Team," Murdock explained.

"That's easy," Jean said, "Get some pictures of him in a corset and high heels, that ought to do it."

"Ha ha," Face dryly remarked as they got in the back with her.

It was a quiet ride home, Jean relapsed into an unconscious state and it was decided best just to leave her alone. When they got back to her house, Hannibal and Murdock got her settled on the couch and on an ice pack for her back, and while she rested, Hannibal reconnoitered with the others about what the best plan would be to get Briggs the boot, and the fastest. Between the four of them they all had plenty of ideas and some of them actually good, but Hannibal decided that whichever approach they took, it would wait for a couple of days.

"Hannibal, are you sure we're not underestimating Briggs?" Face asked.

"If anything," he answered, "I'd say we're overestimating him. If brains were gunpowder, Briggs wouldn't be able to blow his nose. We don't have anything to worry about from him."

"I hope you're right," Face replied.

Hannibal cooked dinner for everyone that night, Murdock put a plate together for Jean but she wouldn't wake up for it, so he wrapped it in foil and put it in the fridge for her for the next day. After dinner, Hannibal rolled Jean onto her stomach and examined the bruises again.

"It doesn't look like anybody tried tenderizing her like a hamburger this time," he observed.

"Well she didn't say they did," Murdock replied, "You don't think she'd lie about something like that, do you, Colonel?"

"Probably not, but I like to cover all bases," Hannibal explained as he replaced the soggy ice pack with a fresh one and pulled her shirt down, "If she'd stay in one position while she slept it would be a lot easier to keep that on."

"Hannibal, can I ask you for a favor?" Murdock asked.

"What is it?" he asked.

Murdock leaned over and whispered it into the Colonel's ear, Hannibal listened and nodded as the pilot explained, and he looked at the Captain and said, "Well sure, Murdock, we can do that."

"Oh thank you, Colonel, I really appreciate it, and I know Jean will too when she wakes up."

* * *

When Jean woke up later that night, her head was swimming and upon first getting her eyes opened she was disoriented and didn't have any idea where she was. It was only because she could hear Murdock saying every few seconds, "Ow, ow, ow," that she knew they were someplace familiar.

"Murdock?" she asked as she rubbed her eyes.

He was nearby and was practically screaming in her ear, "Well hey Saint, I was wondering where you were going to wake up."

"What time is it?" Jean asked.

"Going on 7:30, you were out of it for a long time," he told her, "You missed dinner."

Though it sounded like he was chewing on something now. She opened her eyes and saw they were in her living room, she was on the couch, and he was in the chair next to the couch, and she also noticed he had a big bowl of popcorn on his lap and a threaded needle in one hand, and several bandaged fingers on the other. Jean tilted her head forward and gawked at him in puzzlement and asked, "_What_ are you doing?"

He held up what he was working on, which was a very far from done popcorn string and he told her, "My grandma always took a few days before we got the tree up to make these, them and cranberry strings…you know, I never got that one, where do you get enough cranberries from to string them up? And have you seen the price of cranberries lately? You couldn't do that today. Although…" he seemed to hit on another idea as he got the needle through another piece of popcorn, "If you think about it, in the olden days if you were poor you could get the tree trimmed and then eat off of it, think about it: popcorn, cranberries, candy canes, another thing my grandma did was tie ribbons through cookies and hang them up too…not for long though, as my intermittent memory loss permits me to recall, I tried climbing the tree to get them so the next year she kept the cookies on the plate and peppered the popcorn."

"Murdock," Jean said, "I don't get it, _why_ are you stringing popcorn? We don't have a tree yet."

"Not exactly," he replied, "I called in a favor with the Colonel."

Jean stared at him blankly for a minute before replying, "This I gotta see," and turned around on the couch.

"Ow," Murdock said as he stuck himself again, "Ow…ow…ouch!"

"Oh for crying out loud," Jean said as she reached over and took the bowl and needle from him, "Give me that, I'll do it, I've done it enough times it don't hurt me anymore. Besides, you keep it up much longer and it's going to look like we're hanging cinnamon popcorn."

Murdock took another bandage out of his pocket and wrapped it around another finger and said, "Sorry, hon, I tried."

"And I appreciate it, Murdock, I-really do," Jean's head drooped and her words started to slur together again, "But I'-ll do-it."

"Jean, what did they give you in the hospital to put you to sleep?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," she tried to remember anything she heard the doctors say and she asked Murdock, "What's Vicodin?"

Murdock did a subtle fall back in his seat and said, "Well it's not for sleeping, if they gave you that then you must've really been hurting."

"I can't even remember," she said, "But I _do_ remember that guy Briggs, I don't like him."

"Do you like Decker?" Murdock asked, remembering all the times she talked of wanting to kill the man.

"Well, I guess he's grown on me like a wart," Jean told him, "This is hardly the first time he's ever escorted me to the hospital, you remember that. I like him better than Briggs, did Hannibal tell you what I did to Decker last week?"

Murdock shook his head, so Jean explained about Decker putting her in his car and the subsequent end of the radio and the gas tank.

"I guess that must've been the straw that broke the camel's back," Murdock philosophized as he rubbed his nose, "Letting us get away is bad enough, but having a civilian shoot the radio and kill the car, now _that's_ bad."

Jean nodded and said, "That said he seems to be taking everything a little too well…maybe you were right."

"About what?"

"When you said your blood made B.A. mellow out, well Decker's got Hannibal's blood in him after he got shot two months ago, so maybe it's taking effect and making him mellow out too."

"We can hope," Murdock said with a small smile.

"You think Decker will keep his word about leaving you guys alone until after Christmas?" she asked.

"At this time of the year, I believe _anything_ is possible," Murdock said.

Jean thought back to the present in the back of B.A.'s closet and she nodded, "I think you're right."

Their attention was drawn to a sudden noise coming from outside the front door, it sounded like somebody grunting and groaning.

"Oh good," Murdock announced, "They're here!"

"Who is?" Jean asked.

The door opened and a minute later they saw Face and Hannibal hauling in a 7 foot tall Christmas tree, Face whining and complaining the entire way about being poked by the needles.

"Well, what do you think?" Hannibal asked as they set it down.

"It looks nice," Jean answered, "Now take it outside and hose it down, I'm allergic to the pollen."

Face let out an exasperated groan, to which Jean smirked and told him, "Don't grumble!"

"How're you feeling, Jean?" Hannibal asked.

"I feel like I hurt my back," she answered smartly.

"Oh yeah? Well if you need any help getting upstairs to bed tonight," Hannibal started to suggest, but Jean cut him off.

"No thanks, I'll stay here on the couch tonight," she told him, "Hey Hannibal, what've you got planned for Briggs?"

"Don't worry about that," he said.

"I'm not worried about anything," Jean told him, "I just want to know what the plan is."

"This is the weekend, it's against my religion to work on the weekend when it can be helped," Hannibal responded as he took a cigar out of his pocket, "Come Monday, then we're going to have his armpits hanging from a tree, until then, just relax."

"If one more person tells me to relax," Jean said as she folded her arms against her chest, "I'm going to kill them."

"I'll pass the memo along to Decker," Murdock said.

* * *

Jean wasn't aware that she'd fallen asleep but she realized she must have succumbed to some level of unconsciousness earlier because now she was aware of two hands squeezing her throat trying to kill her. She opened her eyes and even though it was dark in the living room, she was able to see the man who was choking her and she was surprised, because it was Face. It was like he was trying to unscrew a bottle cap, his hands kept twisting and twisting and twisting. Jean got a strangled garbled noise out but nowhere near loud enough to get anybody's attention; so she brought her hand up and gouged him in the eyes. Face yelped and brought one hand back to his eye and Jean took that opportunity to get up from the couch and jump on him and knocked him on the floor and she fell on top of him.

By now, it was obvious that Face was awake, and he was gasping like _he_ was the one who'd just been choked half to death. Jean got off of him and asked him, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

For a minute it seemed that Face was going to start hyperventilating, with every ragged, gasping breath he took his whole body seemed to rise and fall as reality started to fall back into place.

"What happened?" he asked.

"This!" Jean wrapped her hands around his neck and throttled him, albeit her grip was much looser than his hand been. Then she let go of him and asked, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Face looked like he was about to keel over, instead he fell backwards on the floor, and he said, "I'm sorry, Jean, I thought…"

"You thought _what_?" she asked.

"I thought you were a Viet-Cong soldier," he answered.

Jean blinked and said as she turned her head to the side, "And I thought sleeping with Murdock was bad. At least I don't wake up with him choking me."

"I'm sorry, Jean."

"I'm guessing this doesn't happen very often," she said.

"Usually not," Face answered, "But lately…it's just been all coming back."

Jean poked him repeatedly until he looked at her and she said to him, "Maybe we ought to see about getting _you_ a room at the V.A. You know Murdock went to see Richter the other night, he says they're doing wonders at the place these days, so maybe we ought to see about having his old doctor try shrinking _your_ brain."

Face didn't say anything in response to that, he just huffed and felt the back of his head. It was a bad position and Jean knew it, he couldn't very well say that there wasn't anything wrong with him, nor could he say there was something wrong with seeing one of those doctors since Murdock had seen them every day for 10 years.

"Who knows?" Jean continued, "Maybe all of you guys could use a couch session in that place, hey, maybe Richter could find out why B.A.'s scared to death of flying."

Face laughed and said, "Good luck getting him there."

"Very easily," Jean said, "We just tell him we have to get you in there and you refuse to go. He'd carry you in, and then it'd be too late for him to get out."

A thought occurred to Face. Ordinarily he wouldn't wonder why Murdock would go back to the V.A. for a visit, it just seemed normal in his usual crazy way, but all the same he couldn't help asking, "Why _did_ Murdock go to see Dr. Richter the other day?"

Jean shrugged and replied nonchalantly, "Beats me, but he mentioned going back again to see him in a few days."

Which again, for Murdock, sounded normal; he liked Dr. Richter, and probably missed his visits with the psychiatrist. Still, Face couldn't help wondering.

Jean moved to get up and let out a sharp hiss of pain and brought her hand up to the back of her neck.

"What happened?" he asked.

She groaned and said, "The doctors said somewhere between the sidewalk and the hospital I had a chunk of skin taken out of the back of my neck, now I'm feeling it."

Face tried to feel the spot with his hand but it was too dark to tell, so he helped Jean up and led her into the downstairs bathroom to take a look. Right below her neck was a bandage that had half peeled off, he pulled it all the way off and saw a small crater in her flesh that was red and looked sore.

"How _did_ that happen?" Face asked as he soaked a cotton ball in peroxide to clean it.

"Probably when I fell," Jean said, "That sidewalk was hard, at first I didn't feel anything and then it was pins and needles all the way down my back, I wouldn't have noticed."

"Well, it doesn't look serious," he said as he dabbed the cotton ball over the gash and watched it foam up, "But we'll make sure it doesn't get ahead of us and get infected."

"What's this we?" Jean asked, "Are you a partner?"

"Well you can't see it to fix it up," he pointed out as he blew on the white spot.

Once the peroxide had dried, he covered the wound with antibiotic cream and put a bandage over it. "That better?"

"No," Jean answered as she turned around, "But probably by morning it will be."

"Hey look, Jean, I'm really sorry about what happened earlier."

She waved it off and said only, "Forget about it. Come on, let's go back to bed."

"You mean you're actually going to trust me after I tried breaking your neck?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure, why not?" Jean asked a bit cynically, "I know who I can trust, I haven't been wrong yet."

* * *

Murdock didn't know what it was that had woken him up, but something did. He opened his eyes and looked around the dark bedroom trying to figure out if something was wrong, if somebody was in there, if someone was talking, but everything seemed normal. He sat up and looked around the room still, and from the other side of the mattress he heard Hannibal groan tiredly, "What is it, Murdock?"

He wasn't sure, but he was willing to bet that a noise had been involved, so he said, "The noise, did you hear it?"

"Hear what?" Hannibal asked, clearly not all awake, only enough to find out why he had been woken up.

"I thought I heard something," Murdock said as he got out of the bed and fumbled around in the dark to make his way to the door. "I'm going to see if Face heard anything, I'll be back."

"Good luck," Hannibal replied as he turned on his side and went back to sleep. Clearly, the Colonel didn't think the noise or lack thereof was anything to be concerned about.

Murdock tiptoed down the stairs, stopping every few steps to hold his breath and listen, but he heard nothing. As he neared the foot of the stairs, he walked softly on the linoleum tiling in the front hall and crossed over to the dining room. From there he was able to look into the living room, and with the help of the moonlight peering in through the windows, he was able to see a big lump asleep on the floor. Upon closer inspection he saw that it was Face and Jean; their blankets and pillows piled on the middle of the floor where they slept.

Murdock smiled to himself, he knew that they'd come around someday; he'd said before that they were like brother and sister and it seemed that for now anyway, the sibling rivalry had come to a temporary halt. Backing out of the living room, he turned and crept back up the stairs and rejoined Hannibal in his bedroom.

"Find out what it was?" the Colonel tiredly asked as Murdock slipped back into the bed beside him.

"Yeah, it was nothing," he answered as he pulled the covers up.

"Good," Hannibal murmured as he turned over, "Goodnight, Murdock."

"Goodnight."

* * *

Face had learned too well how to win in combat in the jungle. When Jean woke up the next morning and looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she saw the dark purple bruises on her neck from where he'd tried to squeeze the cider out of her Adam's apple. She didn't know if the others were aware of his recent nightmares and flashbacks or not, but she wasn't going to take a chance. Fortunately she still had a jar of skin tone makeup from when B.A. gave her a black eye, so she caked her neck in the foundation and watched as it blended in and the bruises disappeared.

She hadn't been entirely truthful about Murdock never choking her, their wedding night he'd woken up mid-nightmare and squeezed the air out of her. But that was different; he wasn't trying to kill her because he thought she was a Cong soldier, that was because he'd flashed back to the V.A., and it hadn't happened since then either. If Murdock asked about what had happened last night, and she told him, she was sure he would understand since it was something they all went through, but until somebody noticed what happened to her throat, she wasn't going to say anything.

Jean opened the bathroom door and saw Murdock standing right outside. She was surprised to see him but few emotions were readable on her face anymore; she just cocked her head to the side and asked, "Everybody else already up?"

"Yeah," he answered.

"I'll get started on breakfast," she said.

"That's alright, Hannibal already got it cooking," Murdock told her.

"He keeps that up and he's going to do wonders for my diet," Jean said.

"Everything alright?" he asked.

"Yeah, never better," she said and tried to walk past him.

Murdock shoved her back into the bathroom and closed the door behind him, he backed her into a corner by the sink and rubbed his hand against her throat, brushing away the makeup and revealing the telltale bruises.

"Face told you?" she asked.

Murdock nodded, "You know how it is when you're raised by Catholics, they are experts in guilt."

"I thought that was another religion," Jean said sarcastically.

"Well, Catholics are experts on feeling it instead of dishing it out, they invented martyrdom you know, not the original, the second wave of it, when it became popular to be one," he replied.

"Okay, so he choked me, so what?" Jean asked.

"_So_," Murdock repeated, "Are you alright?"

"Sure," she nodded nonchalantly, "I get it, I know why he did it…you know Murdock, if you're going to go back to Richter in a few days, maybe you ought to take him with you, maybe Face could stand a head shrinking session. For that matter though, why _are _you going back to see him?"

"Well he is my favorite doctor and I haven't seen him for a couple months so I just wanted to drop in and tell him hi…but I have a few questions about human psyche and behavior that I thought maybe he could answer for me," Murdock explained as he redid Jean's makeup so Hannibal and B.A. wouldn't notice because neither he nor Face had told them what happened.

"Don't tell me, let me guess," Jean said, "You're going to ask him why the Viet-Cong, and the Nazis and the Ustasha and all of them, why they tortured people, or not why they did it, but how they did it, how they could possibly stand to do it, right?"

Murdock nodded, "How'd you know?"

"Lucky guess, you've been wracking your brain on it for days now and you're going to see an expert on the screwed up minds of the world," Jean replied, "If he comes up with any answers, let me know."

Murdock nodded and started to walk away, but he turned on his heel and went back to her and asked, "What was that thing you said, Ustasha?"

Jean nodded, "In keeping my options open for when my current acting gig dies out, and it'll be soon, I'm reading for a minor part in a new movie, and this is one history lesson none of us ever got in school. It's about the side of the Holocaust that took place in Croatia between their guards and the Serbians who were rounded up and slaughtered."

Murdock eyed her suspiciously and said, "Yeah, I don't remember that from my high school history class."

"You want sick," Jean said as they walked to the kitchen, "Goebbels and Mengele and all of them had nothing on these people. Well, maybe not Mengele, but the rest of them, you wouldn't believe it."

In the kitchen, they were partially drowned out by the sound of sausage and bacon and hash browns cooking and Hannibal talking to the others, but Jean was able to get a few coherent words directly into Murdock's ear. When the burners were off and the food was dished up, Jean took her plate from Hannibal and asked him, "Hannibal, you know anything about Croatia in World War II?"

He looked at her curiously and said, "A little, doesn't quite ring a bell though, how come?"

Jean put her plate down and stepped into the dining room, rifling through a pile of papers on the table, grumbling the entire time, then came back holding a bunch of pages stapled together.

"New movie that they're working on, exploring the extermination camps of Yugoslavia," she explained, "If the guy writing this junk is right, then I think these people would make the Nazis puke in disgust."

"Oh joy, what a nice topic for discussing during breakfast," Face dryly remarked.

Hannibal skimmed through the pages of her would-be character's dialogue and shook his head, "Sounds lousy even for a B picture, but there is some truth to it."

"They didn't have Nazis in Croatia, they had the Ustasha guards, right?"

"I don't think you're pronouncing it right, but yes, if my memory serves," Hannibal nodded.

"Well anyway, this is just supposed to be my lines but the genius that gave it to me put in some of the stuff I'm supposed to be responding to…I mean these guys were sick, they sawed people's heads off and bashed their heads to pieces with mallets, they had a makeshift throat cutter they used on 2000 people a day, and then," Jean flipped through to another page of dialogue and said, "They called it the Ustasha Christmas, they cut the prisoners' throats and then the guards would drink…"

"Jean, do you mind, please?" Face asked, already looking a little green, "I'm trying to eat here."

"Well anyway," Jean tossed her script out the doorway and sent it flying into the dining room and said, "Just out of curiosity, Hannibal, who would you rank as being more evil of the two, the Viet-Cong, or these bloodsuckers?"

"Now _what_ brought _them_ up?" Hannibal asked as they sat down at the table.

"Think of the potential," Jean said, "That could be the next great exploitation movie, VC vs. NDH, even _you_ could get a part in that."

"Ha ha," Hannibal dryly replied, "I told you before I _don't_ do horror movies."

"And monster movies aren't horror movies?" Jean asked.

"No they're not, I told you before that there's a difference," Hannibal said.

"Of course," Jean said mockingly.

"Of course," Hannibal repeated.

Murdock started tapping his fingertips against the table surface and clicking his tongue and started singing, "A horse is a horse of course of course and…" followed by a series of strangled gargling sounds as B.A. quickly put an end to the morning serenade.


	5. Chapter 5

That afternoon, Jean sat on the couch with Murdock as she sorted through the decorations to determine what was new, and what she'd brought back from New York.

"This is definitely from home," she said as she handed him a tiny copper bell, "That's all that's left of the stocking my mother had as a kid."

Murdock held the bell between two fingers and rang it, "Sounds a lot better than the newer ones, that's for sure." He picked up a bell made out of green and gold beads and asked, "Is this new?"

"That's a few years old, one of my mother's friends made that, they have two more at home though," she said.

Murdock tried ringing it and shook his head, "Out of tune." He turned his attention to a box of ball ornaments and commented, "Now these are _old_." And he was right, what was once bright gold, dark blue and shining red were now faded and the paint had worn off of large parts.

"Some things can't be thrown out, money or no money," Jean replied, "These have been in the family for about 30 years, and they'll stay in it until they shatter."

Murdock picked up one and commented, "Maybe they can be touched up."

Jean shrugged and said, "Just don't touch the stained glass ones, you try your artistic touch on those and I'll kill you."

Murdock only laughed in response. They each grabbed a box of ornaments and went over to the tree where Hannibal and Face had gotten the lights strung up.

"Already looking good," Jean noted, "But where's the garland?"

"Over here," Face said as he walked out from behind the tree and revealed he's somehow gotten wrapped up in it.

"What happened to you?" Jean asked.

"I was trying to get a knot out," he explained, "Obviously something went wrong."

"I think I like this better," Murdock said as he picked up one of the popcorn strings and wrapped it around Face's shoulders, snickering to himself as the Lieutenant glared daggers at him and growled under his breath.

"This isn't funny, Murdock," he said.

"Well you thought it was funny when B.A. did it to him," Jean reminded him, "You know what they say about karma."

"Alright, alright," Hannibal said with a laugh as he came up to them and started untying Face, "Let's get him undone before B.A. gets back with the pizzas."

Face rolled his eyes at the thought of B.A. coming in and seeing him like this, he'd never live that one down.

"Hey Hannibal," Jean said as they got Face untangled, "I really appreciate you guys sticking around to help me with this."

"Well we're having fun," he said by way of response.

"Yeah, I guess in a previous life I must've had a pretty good family," Face said, "This almost seems familiar to me."

"Hey Hannibal," Jean said, "Earlier Murdock was asking about if you all are going to come over on Christmas for dinner, and if so we need to figure out what we're having, which works better for you, ham or turkey?"

Hannibal shook his head and said, "Anything that's not frozen pizza will be fine with me."

"What about you, Face?" Murdock asked.

"Oh, I'm not picky, anything's fine with me," he said.

"Boy you're a lot of help," Jean dryly noted, "The next time I want to be alone, I'll call _you_ guys."

"Look Jean, it's your house, you cook whatever you want, it'll be fine with us," Hannibal told her.

The front door opened and B.A. came in carrying three pizza boxes in one arm and a couple of two liter soda bottles in the other. Jean cut him off at the kitchen entrance and asked, "How bout you, B.A., what're your suggestions for Christmas dinner?"

"Anything that that crazy fool don't cook is fine with me," he answered.

"I give up," Jean told Murdock.

"Come on guys, let's get lunch," Hannibal said, "This'll wait."

They put down the ornaments and squeezed past B.A. as he was coming out of the kitchen so they could go in and get the pizza dished up. But a few seconds later they heard a crashing noise coming from the living room and they looked to one another and exchanged similar looks of dreaded anticipation.

"Uh oh," Jean and Face said at the same time. They went into the living room and while they didn't know right offhand what had happened, the end result had been the tree falling out of the stand, off the crate it had been propped up on, crashing to the floor with B.A. laying under it, and the large metal star directly behind the back of his head.

"That's the first time I ever saw anybody get mugged by a Christmas tree," Murdock commented.

"You did this, Murdock, I know it! I'll get you for this, Murdock," B.A. said as he shoved his way out from under the tree, revealing that he'd tripped from getting his feet tangled in a loose string of lights that had been left on the floor.

"Now calm down, B.A., it was just an accident," Hannibal said.

"How _did_ it fall on him?" Jean murmured to Murdock.

"Must've hit that soft spot in his head," he suggested, "Anything taps that area of the mudsucker's cranium and down he goes like a ton of bricks."

"I can't look," Jean said as she covered her eyes with her hand, "Is anything broken?"

"Doesn't look like it except for one string of lights, but those are expendable," Face told her, "We didn't get most of the breakable stuff on yet, but so far everything else looks alright."

"Yeah," Murdock added as he glanced at the Sergeant who had gotten some of the lights and tinsel wrapped around him in the crash, "Especially that fat little ornament."

"Murdock, I'm gonna kill you, fool," B.A. warned him.

Murdock was already taking the defensive position behind Jean when Hannibal intercepted and said, "It could've happened to anybody." He turned to Face and said, "Let's get it up and make sure it's screwed in right this time."

"This is starting to remind me of the 3 Stooges," Jean told Murdock.

"Oh yeah, I had that record as a kid," he said, and recollected in a singsong tone, "Tis the night before Christmas and all through the town, everything's coming loose, everything's falling down."

"Murdock, don't start," Face warned him.

"Why not?"

"Remember how the song ended?" Jean asked him.

"Uh..." Murdock tried to remember and he recalled in a normal talking tone, "Come on, Larry, let's get Curly Joe out from under that tree again."

"Consider yourself Curly Joe," Jean told him.

Murdock swallowed loudly and then suddenly became quiet. At least, he stopped singing, but he picked up one of the larger bells and started ringing it incessantly, slowly inching his way along towards B.A. until he was practically ringing it in the Sergeant's ear.

"You know," Jean said to him, "In ancient times it was believed that by ringing bells people could ward off evil spirits."

Murdock snorted and said directly to B.A., "It isn't driving _you_ off."

B.A. turned and growled at him and was about to pounce on him but the pilot sought refuge once again behind his former wife.

Between the five of them it was short work, but when the tree was finished, wrapped up in silver garland and popcorn, decked out in bright and dull colored balls and bells and beads, two boxes of candy canes, a third box Murdock had stuffed away in the various pockets of his jackets to eat later, and covered from top to bottom with silver tinsel icicles…

"It's perfect," Jean said as she stood back and admired the finished project.

Since the tree had been put on a crate it now stood a foot and a half off the floor and the star almost touched the ceiling, so she had to crane her neck to take it all in.

"The people at Rockefeller Center couldn't do it better," Murdock commented, "And it'd be a waste to try."

"Yep," Hannibal said as he bit down on a new cigar, "Some things just can't replace that old homemade touch."

* * *

That night, Murdock, Jean and Face lay on the living room floor under the Christmas tree and looked up at the lights and how they reflected on the silver tinsel and garlands.

"It 'sho is pretty," Murdock observed.

Jean nodded slightly and agreed, "It sure is."

Murdock smiled as he recalled, "I always loved sleeping under the Christmas tree as a kid, always made me feel like a gift."

"I tried that a few times," Jean replied, "My parents weren't big on it because they were always worried there'd be spiders or something up in the tree that would bite me when I slept."

"If I ever would've tried it I'd be the package marked 'Return to Sender'," Face said.

"Oh I find that hard to believe," Murdock said, "If somebody's willing to keep the fruitcake then there's no reason they wouldn't keep you."

"Boy you really know how to hurt a guy," Face sarcastically remarked.

"Murdock," Jean said, "_What_ is Hannibal's plan for Briggs tomorrow?"

"I don't know," he replied, "He didn't tell me." He turned and looked at Jean, "You mean he didn't tell you?"

Jean shook her head, Murdock turned to Face who cut him off and said, "Don't look at me, B.A. and I've been taking turns trying to get answers out of him all day, he won't tell us anything."

"Are we sure that he even _has_ a plan?" Jean asked.

"Of course the Colonel's got a plan, he's _always_ got a plan," Murdock answered.

"Then why won't he tell us what it is?" she wanted to know.

"Well, he's probably just trying to work all the kinks out first so this one will actually work like he expects it to," Murdock thought.

"Well that _would_ be a nice change," Face agreed.

Jean moved to get up and groaned, then reached one hand behind her back and felt along her neck.

"What's wrong?" Murdock asked.

"I think it's time to change the bandage again," she said.

Murdock peeled the old bandage off and said, "Seems to be scabbing up nicely…a bit green though."

"Itches too," Jean said as she tried scratching it, but Murdock smacked her hand away.

"Don't do that, you'll open it up again," he warned her.

"Promises, promises," she looked at her hand to see if it was already bleeding.

Murdock put more antibiotic cream on the scab and put a new bandage on, and when he was done, the three of them dug some extra bedding and pillows and sleeping bags out of the closet and made their bed for the night on the floor beneath the tree.

"Have to admit it _is_ pretty," Face said as he gazed up at the lights.

"Mm-hmm," Murdock hummed in agreement. It was almost hypnotizing.

After only a few minutes, he and Jean heard Face snoring, and looked over to see he had actually fallen asleep. Murdock crawled into the middle since he told Jean he would put himself between the two of them incase Face had another nightmare during the night since he was better equipped to deal with them than she was. Jean tapped him on his shoulder and signaled for him to get up and follow her; he did and went with her over to the corner of the room where they spoke quietly and in something resembling privacy.

"What's the matter with Face?" she asked.

"Oh he just goes through this every few months or so, he'll be alright," Murdock told her.

"How do you deal with it?" Jean asked.

"Well we've got a lot of experience with it by now," Murdock said.

Jean looked back at the man sleeping contentedly underneath the Christmas tree and whispered to Murdock, "I know Face will never admit it, but I think he has more fun here with us than in any of those penthouses he scams."

"Agreed," Murdock replied, "It's always more fun with people around, especially ones that don't have to check out early the next morning."

"I think he's going to have a good Christmas," Jean said.

"I think we all are," he said to her.

Jean smiled at him and whispered into his ear, "Hey Murdock, I know it's early but what do you say we each open one of our presents now?"

He grinned at her and said, "Sounds like a good idea to me."

They tiptoed back to the tree and reached behind it where the presents had been stored. Murdock picked up one square package tied in green paper with a fat red ribbon and a big bow on top and gave it to Jean, telling her, "Open this one, it's from me."

"I might've guessed," she replied as she lightly shook it to listen. Quietly, she ripped the paper apart and opened the box to find a large Christmas snow globe. There was a key on the bottom, and she didn't think Face would wake up so she wound it up a couple of times and set it on top of the TV to play. A slow rendition of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" played.

"I love it, Murdock, thanks," Jean said as she hugged him, then she pulled away and said, "Now your present."

Jean went over to the tree and reached up, revealing a tiny gift box hidden in the branches, and she put it in Murdock's hand and told him to open it up. The box was barely two inches in any direction; it was green and gold and had a little ribbon bow glued on the top; the top came off in his hand like the lid to a cookie jar, and inside Murdock saw a silver band. He took it out between his thumb and index finger and looked at it questioningly. Then he looked to Jean and asked her, "What's this?"

"Remember when you said it wouldn't do any good to get me a ring when we got engaged because I'd never wear it? But I know that you would," she told him.

Murdock looked at the ring again, and then back at Jean and asked, "So does this mean that we're on again?"

"Not yet," Jean replied, "But when we are, at least one of us will have a ring to wear."

Murdock looked at the ring in awe and placed it on his ring finger, it just fit and he said, "I love it…but how did you know what size to get?"

"I measured your finger when you were asleep and weren't looking," Jean told him, "I picked it up when you guys were out saving that woman from her ex-husband. The guy at the store said silver bands are for engagement, gold ones are only for when you're actually married."

"Well, at least I won't get it mixed up for any of B.A.'s rings," Murdock said as he rubbed it against his shirt to shine it, "Of course his are much _fancier_ than this."

"Gaudier is more like it," she replied.

Murdock chuckled and hugged her, saying, "Darling, I love it…I'll wear it tonight to break it in, and then I'll put it away until we decide to make it official and announce it to everybody."

Jean picked up the snow globe and had Murdock follow her into the dining room. She wound it up again and set it on the table; as it played its low, sweet and somber tune, they joined together and danced slowly around the room.

* * *

Hannibal had always been an early riser by nature, and especially when they were on a job he was always the first one up. But this morning he was up even earlier than usual. The room was still dark and it was still dark outside, only the streetlight down the corner for any illumination so he could even see his hand in front of his face. Instead, he was laying in bed looking up at the ceiling as he thought. He'd been up half the night thinking, not about Decker or Briggs, he already had that figured out; instead he'd had his mind on other matters. He tried to remember how that old saying went: lose a daughter, gain a son, something like that, but what about when it was the son you lost, or didn't lose as the old saying actually went?

He let out a huff as he gave up on trying to figure it out. Of course, he knew the reality was that if Murdock got married, they wouldn't be losing anything; having him live here with Jean wouldn't be any different than when he lived at the V.A. No, it _would_ be different, whenever they had a mission now they wouldn't have to bust him out of anyplace, they could just come in and take him out the front door, or have him come to them without having to do the 100 yard dash away from the men in white.

Hannibal also thought about what they had all been talking about; this was going to be Murdock's first Christmas back home in the states without having to be in the hospital for it. He couldn't imagine what must be going through the Captain's mind right now given his newfound freedom. He also thought about the fact that all of them would be spending Christmas, if all went according to plan, right here at the house. Clearly theirs was not a family of conventionality but it worked for them having each other to rely on, and it took him back. Back to when they first found out Jean had moved to Los Angeles, to when they'd first come out to see her house.

_"Three spare bedrooms, not bad for somebody living alone," Hannibal commented, "Are they furnished?"_

_"Yes they're furnished, genius," Jean replied._

_"Were you expecting company?" he asked coyly._

_"Maybe just a family," Jean responded._

He'd never thought about what she'd said before, but now he was, he was considering just what she had meant when she'd said that. The first thought was what anybody would think; the house had come with three additional bedrooms, certainly large enough for a new family, a married couple and their children. But then he reconsidered the facts; the four of them just barely fit there comfortably because Murdock bunked with Jean, or if not with her then with one of them. The house, large though it was, was just barely big enough to put them up for the night, and she'd known that when she bought the house.

He still remembered the shock he felt when she'd dropped the bombshell that they had been married. It felt like the Twilight Zone then, and now it felt like One Step Beyond: 'What you are about to see is a matter of human record, explain it we cannot – disprove it we cannot'. It still seemed like only yesterday that he'd found out and been knocked head over heels by the sudden revelation. He still remembered that day very well, and he had to laugh at how far everything had come. Oh he still remembered the fire in Jean's eyes as she faced him down after breaking the news, she'd said it plainly enough; theirs had been a marriage of convenience, it had nothing to do with love. And he knew that that was true. Talk about putting the cart before the horse, first they got married and _then_ they fell in love; well, that was life for you. Of course _something_ had been going on between them before they said 'I do', but what exactly it was, he didn't know, and he wasn't sure if even they did.

It was just possible that by that time, they were already in love but just neither one of them knew it. But he doubted it. Of course any other person could look at it in terms of that had been Jean's exact intention when she moved out to California; she knew that the A-Team dwelt in Los Angeles, she knew that Hannibal was an actor in Hollywood, and she knew Murdock was a patient at the V.A., and for someone like her it wouldn't be near as hard to find them as it was for their clients who didn't know the routine. Yes, it could be looked at as being exactly that; that she had planned so far ahead, but he just didn't buy it. In truth, she could tolerate them by that time but she barely even liked any of them, she only clung to Murdock the most because he knew trauma better than the rest of them and could talk her off the edge after her own mind had been rattled by the experiences she'd just barely lived through. Well, better relationships had been founded on far worse, Hannibal thought, and just look at them now. Oh sure by now both the honeymoon _and_ the annulment were over and things had started to cool down now, but he knew that wasn't the end of anything.

Finally deciding he wasn't going to get back to sleep, Hannibal kicked back the covers, got up and quietly sneaked out of his room and down the stairs. In the living room he could see the lights on the tree were still plugged in and it gave him plenty of lights to see by as he saw the three people asleep on the floor under the tree. Face was zipped up in one sleeping back on one side, Murdock was in the middle, and Jean lying right next to him. Damn but he had to admit, they did look cute together, the whole lot of them.

* * *

"Okay, Hannibal, you've kept us in suspense for two days, so what's going on?" Face asked Hannibal later that morning when they were all gathered in the living room.

"Yeah, what's the plan?" Jean asked, "You _do_ have one, don't you?"

"Of course I do," he answered as he took out a fresh cigar for the morning, "And I think it's going to be a good one."

"Well then?" they asked.

"Jean," Hannibal said, "Is your back feeling better today, do you think that you'd be able to help us?"

"I ought to," she said, "The last couple of days you've hardly let me do _anything_ around here. Why? What's the gag?"

Hannibal looked at them and smirked as he explained, "I do believe that our ol' friend Decker has supplied us with our ace in the hole. As it turns out, he _never _told anybody where he worked about Jean, and there is nothing about her in any of the files that he's kept on us over the year."

"So what?" she asked.

"Why didn't he is a better question," Face pointed out, "Once he found out she was involved with us…"

"Well, I think we can agree, it's bad enough trying to explain Murdock's behavior to somebody without losing your own credibility," Hannibal told them, "But if Decker were to try explaining Jean to his superiors, they would've thrown him out on his ear and right into a straitjacket."

"So Briggs doesn't have any idea that she's with us," Murdock was starting to catch on.

"That's right," Hannibal said, "He'll be expecting the four of us, but he is _not_ going to be anticipating _that_," he emphasized as he pointed to Jean.

Jean crossed her arms and said with a smug smirk on her face, "Get me my fork."

"Not yet," Hannibal shook his head, "I've got something better planned."

"What?" they wanted to know.

"What we need to do is find the fastest way to convince the generals overlooking Briggs' assignment that he is not _fit_ for his job, that he takes incompetent to a whole new level."

Murdock raised his hand and asked, "Is that a professional matter or a mental one?"

"If possible, then both," Hannibal answered, "On one hand if we can make him look like a incompetent boob in front of his superiors, that'll do us a world of good, but if we can also make him think he's losing his mind…"

"That's going to be the frosting on the cake," Jean said, "But will it work?"

"One way to find out," he told her.

"Okay, so how do we start?" Face asked.

"Well you know," Hannibal said with his trademark grin on his face, "I think it's only fair that we give Briggs a refresher course in the obstacles we put Roderick through to see how he can hold up."

Jean's eyebrows went up and she turned to Face and stared at him, without saying a word he seemed to catch on and said with a huff, "I'll go get the hand grenades."

"One thing I want to know, Hannibal," Jean said to him, "Are we going to bring Decker in on this as well?"

"Oh I don't think so, not _yet_ anyway," he replied, and explained, "If we brought him in now, Briggs would know it was a setup, however if we go in on this alone, then he's just going to think we're screwing with him."

"What's the difference?" she asked.

Hannibal chuckled and responded, "Good point." He turned and saw that Murdock's face was scrunched up as he tried not to laugh at something. "Something wrong, Captain?"

Murdock snorted a couple of times and said, "I've got an idea that ought to discredit Briggs, what if we got a picture of him in…" he saw Jean looking at him so he went over to Hannibal and said it into his ear.

"Hmmmm," Hannibal seemed to consider the idea, "That certainly would _not_ do him any favors with his superiors, but the question would be how to do it?"

"How to do what?" Face asked.

"Murdock says we ought to get a picture of Briggs knocked out wearing a pink brassiere over his uniform," Jean told him.

The Colonel and Captain looked back at her in shock and Hannibal asked, "You heard that?"

"Of course I did," she replied, "I've got good hearing. Of course that just leaves one little problem, how to get one for the occasion." She turned and looked back at Face.

The conman took a step back and put his hands up and said, "Oh hey, forget it, that is one thing I _refuse_ to get for a mission."

"He'll get a pink Cadillac in the jungles of Vietnam in the middle of a bloody war, but all of a sudden he's opposed to snatching women's undergarments," Jean told Murdock, "Unbelievable."

"Jean," Face said, "Why don't you…"

"Hell no," Jean shook her head, "That's just too ridiculous for me."

"Well then that settles that," Face told her.

"Call Amy, see if she can get a spare one, I would recommend one with plenty of elastic in it, Briggs doesn't look like he's watching his figure much."

"Hey wait a minute," Hannibal said as a new idea hit him.

"What is it?" the others asked.

Hannibal looked at Jean and thought back to what she said a few nights ago when she stayed at his apartment and he said to her, "Kid, I think you hit on a pretty good idea."

"What's that?" Face asked.

"Never mind, Face, but before we do anything I need you to swing by a hospital and pick up a few supplies for us," Hannibal told him.

"What kind of supplies?" the Lieutenant asked.


	6. Chapter 6

Murdock smiled as he gazed down at the land below and cocked his head from one side to the other as he sang, "Well the news had come out in the first World War, the bloody Red Baron was flying once more, the Allied Command ignored all of its men, and called on Snoopy to do it again. Was the night before Christmas, 40 below, when Snoopy went up in search of his foe, he spied the Red Baron, fiercely they fought, with ice on his wings, Snoopy knew he was caught. Christmas bells those Christmas bells, rang out from the land, asking peace of all the world, and goodwill to men!"

Jean was in the seat next to him but her mind was somewhere else. She looked out the window on her side and also looked down at the world below them, but her mind wasn't on that either.

After a couple of minutes, Murdock noticed that he was singing solo and he looked over to Jean and asked her, "What's the matter?"

She snapped back to the present and rubbed her eyes and said, "Nothing, I was just thinking about something."

"About what?" he asked.

"Uh…the other day I was mailing a package back home to my parents for Christmas and I realized this is really going to be the first Christmas I'm going to spend without them. Just seems kind of weird."

Murdock kept one hand on the controls and with the other reached over and patted her shoulder and said, "I know it's gonna be hard being away from them for the first time but at least you got us, we'll still have a good time."

"Yeah, I know we will," she replied, still sounding down in the mouth.

Murdock looked down at the house they were flying over and asked her, "See anything?"

"Nope," she replied, "It doesn't look to me like this guy Briggs is too worried about people busting into his place, but then again who would want to?"

"Yeah well maybe Hannibal will be able to pick something up on the spy camera Briggs don't know he's carrying around on the front bumper of his car," Murdock thought out loud.

Jean halfheartedly murmured something in agreement, it was obvious that her heart wasn't fully into the job today yet.

"Come on, darling, what else is bugging ya?" Murdock asked.

"I don't know," she replied, "For some reason I just feel miserable today."

"Well I'm sure you'll come around once we actually get in contact with Briggs," Murdock said, "I know you're just dying to twist his mind beyond repair and drive him straight into the psychiatric ward."

He caught the small smirk on her face when he mentioned that.

"Have to admit," she said, "It ought to be fun."

"That's the right attitude," Murdock said, "Now come on, you know this song."

Jean gave in and joined him on the third verse, "The Baron made Snoopy fly to the Rhine, and forced him to land behind the enemy line, Snoopy was certain that this was the end, when the Baron cried out 'Merry Christmas, mein friend!' The Baron then offered a holiday toast, and Snoopy our hero, saluted his host, and then with a roar they were both on their way, each knowing they'd meet on some other day. Christmas bells those Christmas bells, ringing through the land, bringing peace to all the world, and goodwill to men!"

"Murdock," Jean thought of something and turned to him, "Murdock."

"What is it?" he asked.

"I just thought of something, and I wanted to know, speaking as a Vietnam Veteran, do you find the peace sign offensive?"

"Where'd that come from?" he asked.

"I always grew up hearing that," she said, "My uncle served, so I could never wear anything with the sign on it, it was seen as disrespectful."

"Well…" Murdock kept his eyes on the sky ahead of him as he answered, "A lot of the people who were screaming for peace in the 60s and 70s could've stood to follow the rule on practicing what they preached, that is for sure, they say they want peace and they act worse than the soldiers they are accusing of being murderers."

"But what about you?" Jean asked, "What do you think of it?"

"To me," he answered, "A symbol isn't any different than a word, and what is it everybody says at Christmastime? Peace on earth, funny they don't seem to think we can benefit from having it year round. But anyway…it's natural to look at a symbol and respond in a certain way, like the swastikas."

Jean thought of something else and told him, "We have a picture of my grandmother when she was a little girl during the 1920s, there's a swastika on the cardboard frame it was put in back then, but that didn't have anything to do with Nazis, she was born in America."

"I know it didn't," Murdock told her, "Originally it was a peace sign but once again the Nazis came in and just had to ruin everything. It's like saluting."

"Huh?"

"Jean, when you salute the flag, how do you position your arm?" Murdock asked.

Jean demonstrated by showing the proper salute that she and millions of other kids of the 60s and 70s grew up learning.

"Uh huh," Murdock said, and told her, "Originally people saluted the flag, like this," and he raised his right arm up stiffly.

"That's a Nazi salute," she said.

"Sure today, and for about 50 years, but originally _this_ was how you saluted the flag, but then the Nazis adopted it as being their own, and that's why Lindy got in trouble."

"Who?" Jean asked.

"Charles Lindbergh," Murdock answered with an air of pride in his voice as he said the name, "They got pictures of him giving that salute, but they conveniently took out the part showing he was saluting Old Glory, got him in a lot of trouble, made him a real unpopular fellow, the jerks," he added under his breath.

"How about that? You learn something new every day," Jean muttered.

"Getting back to the original question, do I find a peace sign offensive? No, there are those who wear it and believe in what it stands for, and there are those who don't, it's just like everything else in the world, for every religion that exists there are those who live by its rules, and those who use it to their own agenda and pull everyone else in it down and drag them through the mud. You can't hold the true believers accountable for what the faulty ones do," Murdock told her.

Jean nodded and said, "That's nice."

* * *

"We've spent all day watching everywhere Briggs goes," Face told Hannibal that evening as they'd gathered at his apartment, "We've seen every place he has driven to, Murdock and Jean flew over his house and scouted out the whole surrounding vicinity, we've done everything except tap his phones and set up closed circuit TV in his house."

"Which we _could_ do but I don't think will be necessary," Hannibal replied, "So, we have a rough idea how he spends his days, when he clocks in, when he goes home, and we can guess that his place is not going to be Fort Knox to get into, it should be…"

"Don't say it!" the others warned him.

"What?" he asked coyly.

"Every time you say it's going to be a piece of cake," Murdock said, "We all wind up getting our butts kicked, stomped, and walked all over in steel toed boots."

"And incase you forgot," Face added, "The first part of your plan involves the four of us getting _in_ to the Federal Building without being detected, just _how_ do you propose we do that?"

"Not only that," Jean threw in, "But directly into Briggs's office, and he may be a jackass but he's not an idiot."

"Well I don't know about that," Hannibal responded, "All the same, bright and early tomorrow morning, when Briggs goes to work, we'll be going with him."

"Oh joy," Face dryly remarked, "I can hardly wait."

His whining was cut off by a loud howling noise they heard outside the windows.

"Boy the wind's really picking up now," Murdock said, "We were lucky, I got the chopper landed just before things _really_ got bad this morning."

"Unfortunately, it's only supposed to be worse tonight," Hannibal told him, "The weatherman was saying up to 55 miles an hour."

"That's definitely going to take somebody's power out," Jean commented, "Too bad we couldn't bank on it being Briggs's."

"This is true but all the same," Hannibal said, "Stuff's already started to fly around down in the street." He turned around and said, "Tell me, Jean, do they still get tornadoes in New York?"

"Of course they get tornadoes in New York," she answered, "They get tornadoes everywhere, it's not like earthquakes. Our house got ripped apart by one when I was little, so I know what they're like."

"Well, we may not get one here, but," Hannibal looked out the window and saw how strong the wind was gusting and saw things being blown around down below, "Call me paranoid, but I think it'd be better if everyone stayed here for the night."

"It makes sense," Jean said, "If Briggs were to find out where any of us are and try ambushing us in the middle of the night, and we're all in one place we have a better chance of fighting them off. It's almost dark as it is, and I don't like traveling in bad weather when I can't see what's going on."

"Well it's fine with me," Murdock said.

"Me too," B.A. agreed.

"Then I guess that makes us unanimous," Face said to Hannibal, "Now that just leaves a matter of where to put everyone."

* * *

Hannibal hadn't told the others what his plans were for the sleeping arrangements just yet, he had decided Face, Murdock and Jean could take his bed and he and B.A. would take the hide-a-bed in the living room. He went into the bathroom when he saw the door ajar, and saw Jean standing in front of the mirror on the medicine cabinet. She froze where she stood and didn't turn around, but she didn't need to, he saw her reflection in the mirror and saw the bruises on her neck. He closed the door behind him and asked, "What happened?"

Jean turned her gaze down to the sink and said, "It's nothing."

She felt two big hands on her shoulders and they jerked her around and she glanced up to see the look on Hannibal's face as he got a better look at the bruises and she knew he was putting the pieces together.

"Who did this to you, Jean?"

"It doesn't matter," she told him.

"Briggs didn't do this," he knew.

"No he didn't, and neither did Decker, so just let it go," she told him.

"Jean," he said in a firm tone to make sure he had her attention, "Who tried to strangle you?"

"It doesn't matter," she repeated, "It's over with, it's taken care of."

But Hannibal wasn't convinced. He placed his own hands over the marks for comparison, his were slightly bigger. He knew Jean well enough to know she didn't let things like this go, so if she wasn't pushing the issue then it meant that she was protecting somebody, but who? If she was protecting someone, then he knew, and it killed him to acknowledge, that it was one of his men, and only two of them had hands the right size to do this. Of course he knew neither of them would've done it on purpose…but if one of them started having flashbacks. A light bulb went off in his head and it exploded. He composed himself and asked Jean, "How bad is it?"

"Not bad," she said, "I can still swallow alright. It's just going to take a while to fade out."

"Does Murdock know about this?"

"Yeah, he does."

"Do you have something to cover it up with?" he asked.

"At home."

"Alright," Hannibal thought about the next thing that needed to be done, "You and Murdock will take my bed for the night, the others won't have to know."

He couldn't tell from the look on Jean's face if she had figured out that he knew, but it didn't matter, because his mind was made up on what they were going to do. He went out to the living room where the others were and said, "Alright, here's how the sleeping arrangements are going to go for the night. Face, you and B.A. take the hide-a-bed, and Murdock, Jean and I'll take the bedroom."

"What?" Face asked as he stood up from the couch, "Why? I thought _I_ was going to be bunking with them."

He'd just gotten his answer on who had been responsible. First Hannibal had thought back the last couple of days and remembered everyone's behavior: if Murdock had done it, he might've been able to keep quiet about what he'd done but he would feel guilty about it and that would show, but he hadn't done anything wrong, purposely or not, now Face on the other hand...Face didn't seem to be feeling too guilty about anything either, but he hadn't been too eager for them all to spend the night at the apartment, and when he started having flashbacks he preferred having someone stay with him at night, and it was usually Murdock since he was an expert on them by now. Face had kept himself pulled together but he hadn't responded well to the fact that he and Murdock would be separated for the night. Hannibal got his answer, but hell if he was going to let on that he knew; no doubt Face had already torn himself up over what happened, and bringing his subconscious dirty deed to light wouldn't help anybody, so he came up with a good, quick lie.

"Face," Hannibal told him, "Jean might start flashing back to when Briggs assaulted her and if that happens she might tear you up in the night, and the last thing I want is to have to shell out $1500 to fix your teeth _again_, capping them was bad enough and replacing them after Jamestown was worse. Now Murdock already knows how to handle her and she'll respond to him, and if she doesn't, then I'll be able to restrain her."

Murdock got up and went into the bedroom to change for the night, leaving the other three in the living room.

"Hannibal," Face whispered as he leaned into him, "Why can't someone else do it? Why can't she bunk out here with B.A.?"

"That won't work, if he rolls over on her in the night, he'll kill her," Hannibal told Face, "Or she'll try to kill him, you're used to it."

"Oh thanks a lot," Face dryly responded.

B.A wasn't sure what was going on but he could tell that something was bugging Face. Of course with all of their histories combined he had a pretty good guess what the problem was; they'd all had their share of nightmares from the war, and they'd all seen Face when he slipped into his nocturnal annihilator mode, all had had to deal with it at some time or another, and he seemed to be slipping down the slope again.

Face about jumped out of his skin when he felt something grab his shoulder, he half turned and saw it was B.A., who told him simply, "Don't worry, Face, ain't nothing gonna happen tonight that we can't handle."

Face didn't seem entirely convinced but he forced a small smile and replied, "Thanks, B.A."

* * *

It was after midnight and the winds still hadn't stopped blowing. Hannibal hadn't been to sleep yet so he lay in the middle of the bed sandwiched between his Captain and his corporal and looked up at the ceiling as he listened to the gusting winds that sounded like they were trying to tear the building apart. Well good luck, he thought, this building had already survived tornadoes, flooding and about two dozen earthquakes since it had been built near the turn of the century, it could stand a little wind as well.

On his left side was Murdock, blissfully asleep and unaware of anything, and on his right side was Jean, likewise asleep and oblivious to the world outside. Getting the three of them fitted into the bed hadn't been easy and it wasn't very comfortable from his own perspective, but it would do for the night, and at least this way he knew Jean would be safe incase Face went off again in the night. At least B.A. had experience in dealing with the nightmares, and when Face started trying to kill people in his sleep; they'd all had experience with that, Jean hadn't, Hannibal hadn't brought it up with her again, but he couldn't imagine what it must've been like when she woke up with his hands around her throat. From the shade of the bruises it looked like he did a good number on her and it was amazing she was still alive. Absentmindedly he reached over and wrapped his hand around the side of her head and pulled her slightly closer towards him as the full weight of that thought sank in and hit him like an anvil.

He hated having to admit it but he couldn't stand the thought of anything happening to Jean. She'd become a large part of their lives, just like Amy, except Amy knew when to back off and didn't often go deliberately looking for trouble, especially on her own, but this kid, she'd charge head on into a massacre if she thought she had a chance of coming out of it, especially if she thought one of them was in trouble. He wished he could find out where she got that stubborn streak from because he had met both of her parents and clearly it had _not_ been hereditary. He turned his head and looked over at the man sleeping beside him, now Hannibal knew it was important for spouses to have things in common but it was scary how much alike these two could prove to be. Because he knew that Murdock was the same way, there wasn't anything he wasn't willing to do for one of them, he would lay his life down on the line for anyone that he thought needed help, anyone that he cared about.

Maybe, he laughed to himself as he thought, they get it from me.

Murdock had been a young man when Hannibal first met him; grown up but certainly not completed yet, so many things in the Captain's life hadn't been finalized at that time, and why should they? He was only in his 20s, still time enough for his whole life to change, and it had, as had the rest of theirs. He didn't like to admit it but perhaps he'd had more of an influence on his men since they first met than he realized. Of course he was the same way, he would do anything to save one of them, he wouldn't let anything happen to any of them if he could help it.

Oh boy, suddenly he couldn't breathe. He realized the weight pressing on his ribs was Murdock, who had rolled over in his sleep. Using his other hand to slightly lift Murdock off of him so he could move over a couple inches, Hannibal shifted over and let Murdock's head drop down on the mattress beneath him. He had to laugh, Murdock curled on his side with his hands held up in front of him like paws, suddenly gave the pilot much resemblance to a sleeping dog. This one, Hannibal noted, had improved tremendously as far as nightmares were concerned, now that he was out of the hospital. Murdock always insisted his flashbacks weren't to 'Nam, but to the V.A., Hannibal had never been able to figure that one out and half the time he suspected it wasn't the truth anyway, but he was starting to wonder.

Outside the winds howled and screeched and raged on and on, it sounded like a banshee convention to Hannibal; but he also noticed that that was about the only thing he was hearing. No screaming, nobody talking, no sounds of a struggle coming from the living room, nothing to indicate that Face was suffering another flashback tonight, and for that he was grateful. In truth, he would've rather been the one staying with the Lieutenant incase the past came calling again on him tonight, but he knew that B.A. would be able to restrain Face if anything happened, and he also had these two to consider. True, he didn't think Jean would really flash on her encounter with Briggs, but she _might_ flash back to Face choking her in her sleep; and if that happened, he'd need to restrain her as well.

Theirs was not an easy family to be a member of, but he knew between them all, they wouldn't want another. This was the one place where all of them belonged. He thought about it and came to the conclusion that he already had everything he needed for Christmas, and two of them were trying to squish him right now. Through careful maneuvering, he reached down without bumping into either of his bedmates and pulled the covers up higher on all three of them, and settled down to go to sleep for the night.

* * *

Jean groaned the next morning as she lay face down on the bed and Murdock hovered over her, trying to administer an amateur massage to work a kink out of her back that had developed sometime during the night.

"I'll tell you something, Murdock," she said, "I think those freaks that sleep with multiple partners, either gotta be very flexible, or their third partner's gotta be skinnier than Hannibal for them to all fit in the same bed."

"Either that or they just got a bigger bed than Hannibal does," Murdock replied, "Ooh, you're really tense here by your shoulder blade."

"Well hurry it up, I'm freezing like this," she told him.

Murdock glanced over at the clock and saw that by Hannibal's watch they were running late. "Alright, we'll wrap it up now and get at it later." He picked up a bottle of liquid heat that was on Hannibal's nightstand and got ready to rub some on when Jean suggested he water it down first.

"You know that doesn't do any good, it only makes it burn more," he told her.

"I know," she replied, "I feel like I slept on a toolbox last night, this can only be an improvement."

After the heat rub had had a minute to sink in, Jean put her shirt on and got up from the bed. They both heard someone knocking on the front door outside and went to see who could possibly be paying Hannibal a visit, especially at 7 o' clock in the morning.

The others were gathered in the living room and when Face opened the door, Amy stepped in, not quite looking fully awake and said, "I got your message on my answering machine, Face, now tell me why I had to get you a size 48 bra?"

"Wishful thinking," Murdock said with a boyish smirk.

"Actually, Amy it's a very long story," Face said as he took the pink garment from her.

"Long story short," Jean came up to Amy and told her, "Decker got fired so now we're trying to get rid of the guy that replaced him so he can get his old job back."

"Okay…why?" Amy asked.

"Another long story," Face said, "And this one doesn't have a shortcut, so I'll just have to explain it to you later when we're finished."

"Whatever you say," she replied, "I'm out of here, I've got to get to work."

"Amy, before you go, can I ask you a question?" Murdock asked as he followed her out the door.

"What is it, Murdock?" Amy asked as she stopped at the head of the stairs.

Jean watched their conversation from the doorway, Face came up behind her and asked, "What's going on?"

Jean shut the door and said only, "Private conversation."

"Well, we've just hit a temporary setback," Hannibal said as he came out of the kitchen, "Briggs has already gone out and taken the MPs with him, apparently somebody called in a tip of having spotted us over in Santa Barbara."

"What would we be doing over there?" Face asked.

"If I heard it right, we are supposed to be over there terrorizing some small family that runs a mom and pop diner that's about to go out of business," Hannibal said.

"Uh huh, and why would we do that?" Face asked.

"Never mind that, if you're _here_, then who are _they_ seeing?" Jean asked, "And for that matter, _how_ did you find that out?"

"We've got a radio set up here that tunes in to the ones in the MP cars," Hannibal said, "That way if they ever decide to raid us, we'll know in advance. As to who they are, could be anybody, you know how those tip lines work, it's nothing to worry about."

"But it puts us off our schedule," Face said, "We have to wait for Briggs to get back before we can go down to the Federal Building to bug him."

Hannibal smirked and replied, "Not necessarily, this could help us."

"How?" they wanted to know.

"Follow me," Hannibal said as he headed to the door, "I'll explain on the way."

He about collided with Murdock out in the hall as he stepped out of his apartment.

"We ready to go, Colonel?" Murdock asked.

"Yes but there's been a slight change of plans," Hannibal explained, "Come on, Captain."

"Right-o!" Murdock saluted as he ran down the stairs behind him.

* * *

"What can I say, sir?" Crane asked, "The storm last night must've messed up the lines, we've got people coming in saying they were called about power, about the phone lines, about exterminators, we've even got somebody here says he's from the Board of Health."

"Who called them?" General Bullen asked.

"They said they were called to come out by a General Bowman," Crane said, "But we can't find anybody here by that name."

"That's because there _is_ nobody in this building by that name," Bullen told him, "Now I don't know _what_ those people are doing here but we don't need them, so get rid of them."

"Yes, sir," Crane said as he got up from his chair and left the General's office.

Crane rolled his eyes on his way out; he was glad that Briggs had appointed someone else as his driver, he hadn't spent much time around the man but already he knew he didn't like him. Sure, he had a lot of qualities that made him similar to Decker but he was no Decker, though if he could be honest, Decker wasn't all that great either, but he liked that man better than the new colonel who had replaced him.

As he turned the corner he bumped into somebody and immediately started to apologize and then stopped when he saw who it was he'd knocked into. Jean was dressed in old overalls with a painter company name stitched on the bib pocket and back, and an old white shirt and a rag tied over her hair, but he recognized her still. She said nothing but the glare in her eyes dared him not to say one word to give them away.

"Watch where you're going, pal, wet paint here," she said as she slopped a brush into a can and proceeded to splatter it all over the wall. As she worked she grumbled something about 'replacing 20 year old lead paint'.

Crane fought back the laugh that was threatening to break loose, and as his face cracked he balled his hand up over his mouth like he was coughing.

"Aha! My good man!"

Oh no. He turned around and saw what he presumed to be Hannibal Smith, but the man had more wrinkles and longer, darker gray hair and was dressed in a set of coveralls and it was hard to tell except for the voice.

"Do you work here, sir?" he asked.

Crane lost the fight with a small snort that worked its way loose but he managed to compose himself and answer, "Yes, sir."

"How do you do?" Hannibal shook his hand, "Duis Duison of the Acme Telephone Company, I understand you've been having problems with some of your phones?"

"Well we can't be sure about that," Crane started to answer.

"To be more specific I was told that it was the phone in a Colonel Briggs' office that needed to be fixed, can you show me where that is?"

"Yes," Crane nodded, and pointed down the hall, "Over there."

"Bless you sir," Hannibal said as he picked up his toolbox and headed down there, but not before tripping over the roller pan of paint and slopping some of it on the floor.

"Watch where you're going you moron, wet paint!" Jean hollered at him as he disappeared from view.

Crane was starting to lose it again, and he lowered his head and murmured to himself, "This is getting to be too much." He glanced around to make sure nobody was watching them and he quietly asked Jean, "Is there another one around that we'll be seeing soon or is this it?"

"Bugs! Bugs! Shoo-shoo-shoo!" they heard Murdock call out from somewhere else on the floor.

"Oh no," Crane was choking now, and just _had_ to turn and see this one.

Murdock announced his arrival before they ever saw him; they heard a hissing noise and saw white clouds of something fill up the room, and in he came in a white coat with a mask over his face and goggles over his eyes as he sprayed a customized fire extinguisher to look like a bug poison dispenser.

Jean tossed her brush back into the can and demanded to know, "What the hell now?"

"This area has been quarantined," Murdock told her, "Termites."

"I don't see no termites!" she told him.

"Invisible termites!" he replied, "Worst kind, can't see 'em, can't kill 'em! Only hope is to gas the little suckers and hope they don't mate. Do you know what the going rate is on termite pregnancies?"

Crane had a better part of his face buried in his hand, it was no wonder these people always got away, when they came in with an act, they were too ridiculous to believe, let alone to catch.

Crane snapped his head up so fast he almost got a whiplash; he could hear one of the Generals coming down the hall and he switched into full military mode and started screaming at Murdock, "What do you think you're doing, this is a government building!"

"Oh yeah?" Murdock replied, "That'll be a fine headline for the papers won't it? U.S. Government defeated by wood nibblers, this whole building's going to come crumbling down, mark my words."

"Look!" Crane told him, "Nobody called you so why don't you pack up your gas cans and get the hell out of here?"

"Well you're certainly testy," Murdock said, "How long you been here?"

"Five months!"

"Well what're _you_ getting all out of shape for? I've been at this job for 5 years and you don't see me acting like that!" Murdock replied.

Jean took that as her cue to disappear because she had to check on how things were going for the others. She went up to the next floor and found Hannibal and Face gathered in the corner by the janitorial closet. Hannibal came out carrying a large metal bucket filled with water and Face said in his usual whining tone when he thought something was a bad idea, "Aw Hannibal, don't tell me you're going to hit them with the water."

"No Face," Jean told him as she came up to the two men, "He's going to throw the water away and hit them with the bucket," and she stomped on his foot as if to emphasize 'don't be an idiot'.

"YEOUCH!"

"Be quiet," Jean said, "Otherwise we're gonna have them all up here before we're ready. What's the plan, Hannibal?"

"Murdock had an excellent idea," Hannibal said as he took a step back into the closet, "He suggested that we use the janitorial supplies to our advantage and when they come through here, we chase them off with a few ammonia bombs."

"Oh no, _again_?" Face whined.

"Again? When was the last time?" Jean asked.

"Never mind that," Hannibal said, "We have to get everything in place before Briggs gets back."

"Well where's B.A.?"

"With any luck he's still off in the other end of the building convincing whoever's down there that this whole place is a health hazard," Face said.

"Well we already knew that, coming into this place is bad for anybody's health," Jean remarked, "Especially fugitives."

"There they are!" they heard Murdock, and saw him coming towards them, followed by B.A., who had had just about enough of parading around like a target hidden in plain sight in a white coat, doctor's mask and scrub cap.

"Hannibal, we ready to go yet?" B.A. asked, "I don't like this."

"Almost, what'd you find out on your end?" Hannibal asked.

"Got the charges set when I told that fool I was checking the room for a possible carbon monoxide leak. When the timer goes off tonight, half the power's gonna blow around here, and them suckers gonna be running around in the dark."

"And that's when we come back in and make our official entrance," Hannibal said.

"When?" Face asked.

"Yeah, when?" Murdock and Jean also wanted to know.

"Eight o' clock tonight," Hannibal told them, "So we've got another ten hours, in the meantime I suggest we all just quietly make our way out of here one at a time and meet up back at the house."

"Hear that, Murdock?" Jean asked, "Eight o' clock, set your watch."

"Right," he brought his leg up and fidgeted with the dial on a wristwatch he'd somehow gotten strapped to his ankle.

"Oh brother," B.A. rolled his eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

"Waiting is always the worst part of Hannibal's plans," Murdock told Jean that afternoon as they sat on the couch in her living room.

"This must be what it feels like to be waiting for a baby," Jean commented as she draped one leg over the other.

"It never bothered me none," Murdock said.

"Murdock, you never had a baby," Jean reminded him.

"Of course I didn't, that's why it never bothered me," he replied. Through the corner of his eye he saw Jean take an envelope out of her pocket and take some papers out of it. "What's that?"

"This came in the mail today, it's from my mom," she answered, "She's sent me her Christmas recipes…guess I can try them and see if they turn out any good."

"What kind of recipes?" Murdock asked as he tried to grab them away from her.

"Mostly sweets," Jean said, "My mother's got recipes for fruitcake, peanut butter snowballs, marshmallow fudge, and about ten different kinds of cookies: sugar cookies, gingerbread, peanut butter, double chocolate chip, tube cookies."

"Tube cookies?" Face repeated as he sat down beside them, "What's that?"

"Some kind of recipe that you shove the dough into a metal tube along with the food coloring and on the end are metal stencils that you push the dough through so it comes out in the shapes of camels and stars and trees and they're already green and yellow and blue…though that one we haven't tried for many years," Jean said, "And why break with tradition now?" She took that one and flung it over her shoulder, "And here's one for her homemade Chex mix, get two boxes of cereal, pour them in a bowl with butter, Worchester sauce and garlic salt, bake it in the oven and that's it, it's actually pretty good."

"Hey Jean," Murdock poked her in the back repeatedly until she looked at him and he said, "You got anything planned for Christmas Eve?"

"No, why?" she asked.

"Stay here," he said as he got up from the couch. He grabbed Face and jerked him over to the middle cushion to take his place and told him, "Stay there," and went off to find the others.

"What do you think that's about?" Jean asked Face.

"I don't think I want to know," he replied.

Murdock found Hannibal and B.A. in the kitchen and he went over to Hannibal and asked him, "Is there any reason why we all couldn't come here for Christmas Eve?"

"Not that I know of, why?" Hannibal asked.

"Well, Jean doesn't have anything planned, and I think she thinks we won't be here either, and I think it's got her down some," Murdock explained, "And...well Colonel, it just ain't right for anybody to be depressed for Christmas Eve, or alone."

"That's certainly true," Hannibal nodded his head in agreement, "We can come over but what'll we do?"

"Stay here," Murdock told him, and ran back into the living room. He didn't stop before trying to sit down and so he crashed half on and off both Face and Jean's laps.

"Saint, what do you usually do for Christmas Eve?" he asked.

"Well," Jean answered, "Christmas is the day we have the big meal, so on Christmas Eve night we just put a bunch of stuff together, you know, finger sandwiches, potato chips, pretzels, crackers, cookies, just a lot of appetizers and stuff."

"Sounds like fun," Face said, sounding only half convinced but he wasn't in a mood to argue about it.

"Great, I'll be back," Murdock said as he jumped up and went back into the kitchen, and he told Hannibal what he had planned, "I can stay here with her that day and cook, and you guys could just come over in the evening, purely walk-in. I already asked Amy if she could make it, if she didn't have any plans."

"What'd she say?" Hannibal asked as Face entered the kitchen to find out what was going on.

"That she's getting depressed because she realized she _doesn't_ have anything planned for Christmas Eve," Murdock answered, "But she said she'd come."

"Well we'll come too, just a little friendly drop-in," Hannibal said.

"And stay the night?" Murdock asked.

"Of course," Hannibal responded, "Save us the trouble of going home and coming back the next day."

"Now _I'm_ depressed," B.A. said, "Instead of spending Christmas in Chicago with my momma, I gotta spend it here with the Fool of Christmas Past."

Face laughed and said, "Oh come on, B.A., you know you love him."

B.A. turned and scowled at Face as he let out one long growl under his breath.

"Come on, B.A., it wouldn't be right," Hannibal said, "It won't be the same if you're not here, and your mother is a very understanding woman, she knows that we can't always get out to Chicago with our current lifestyle."

"Besides, you could call her when we come over for the party," Face added, "That'll be the next best thing, right?"

"Well…" B.A. reluctantly gave in, "At least I can talk to my momma instead of that jabbering fool all night."

"That's the spirit," Hannibal said with a smirk.

* * *

Murdock consulted his watch and told Jean, "We've still got plenty of time until we have to get back to see Briggs tonight, what do you say we get out of here for a while and get some shopping done?"

"For what?" Jean asked.

"Well look Jean, we're gonna be busy for the next couple of days, after which it'll be time to start cooking for Christmas, so we better get the ingredients now that we're gonna need then."

Jean slowly nodded and acknowledged, "That makes sense. Let's get Face and drag him along with us."

They rounded up the reluctant Lieutenant and they got in Jean's car and headed down to the grocery store. Murdock grabbed a cart and shoved off on it like it was a scooter and knocked whole rows' worth of contents into it, whether it was anything they needed or not. Jean and Face followed behind him and put back anything they didn't think they'd be needing.

"What all _are_ you going to need?" Face asked Jean.

"I don't know, let me see," Jean took the envelope out of her pocket and read through the ingredients, "Four pounds powdered sugar, five pounds flour, 10 pounds of butter, a new jar of peanut butter."

Murdock was ahead of them and was counting off other things as he dropped them into the cart like he was spiking a whole case of footballs.

"And what's all this for, Murdock?" Face asked.

"Well as you well know, Faceman, I do have a touch of the gourmet in me, and this will be a perfect opportunity for me to try out a few new recipes of my own."

"Just remember Murdock, this is finger food we're making, just a bunch of appetizers, so don't try anything fancy," Jean told him, "Save that for another time."

"Well we _must_ get the menu figured out," Murdock said.

"Oh it's very easy," Jean replied, "Pigs in a blanket, meatballs, cheese and crackers with olives."

"True, but don't forget, we _are_ going to be having B.A. over for dinner that night so we better make sure we have plenty of everything and that's no easy task," Murdock said.

"Hey that reminds me," Jean put her arm around Murdock and yanked him over towards her and said to him, "I've got a recipe for Christmas punch, and I say for a laugh we put a little something extra in B.A.'s glass."

"Oh, what?" Murdock asked.

Jean leaned over and answered in his ear, Murdock laughed like a schoolboy anticipating a great prank and said, "He'll kill us if he found out."

"So don't tell him," she replied.

Murdock suddenly got a panicked look on his face and he tapped Jean on the shoulder and told her, "Don't forget, I've got an appointment to see Dr. Richter again today."

"That's Christmas for you," Jean said, "So much to do and even less time to do it all in than usual. Which reminds me, I think after I get you dropped off, I'm going to look into getting a little more Christmas shopping done."

"Oh that's a good idea," Murdock said, "I'm still having a hard time figuring out what to get Hannibal."

"You and me both," she told him, "He's hardly the man who has everything, but what more does he need than what he's got already?"

"Maybe one of the salespeople at the store can help point something out," Face suggested.

"They can try," Jean didn't sound convinced, "Face, maybe you better come with me, you know more what he likes than I do."

Murdock picked up a large container of chopped candied fruit and two of candied cherries: red and green, and dumped them in the cart too and said, "So long as we're back before 8 tonight, it's fine with me."

Face picked up the tub of fruit and said, "Oh boy, I really hope you're not planning to eat this stuff as is, Murdock…then again," he put it back down and added, "I wouldn't want to eat it in a fruitcake either."

"Picky," Murdock teased.

* * *

"I'll tell you, Face, I don't like it," Jean said once they'd gone on to a department store after dropping Murdock off at the V.A., "I don't like him seeing that doctor again."

"You don't like any doctor," Face reminded her, "You didn't even like Maggie when you had that concussion."

"So what?" Jean asked, "I particularly don't like those psychotic doctors."

"That's psychiatric," Face corrected her.

She shook her head, "They're all psychotics, the whole lot of them. The only reason they go into that business is to find people who are crazier than they are."

"You really believe that?" Face asked.

"Why else would anybody go into that profession? History's full of it, anybody who worked the loony bins were even crazier than the people they were supposed to be treating, just look at their methods. And we're no better in this quarter century either, electroshock therapy, everybody know it doesn't work, and yet they still use it, why?"

"Doctor Richter doesn't do that though," Face told her, "All he does is talk with Murdock."

"So what? That doesn't mean I have to like that either," she replied.

"You are impossible," Face said.

"Yeah and Murdock still chose to marry me so what's that say about him?" Jean asked.

"I'm not sure yet," he responded.

They'd been walking around the department store for a while and hadn't found anything that might be suitable for Hannibal yet. Jean stopped at a counter and the man behind it asked if he could help her.

"Maybe," she answered, "I'm looking for a present for a friend of mine."

"Is this friend a man or a woman?" he asked.

"Man."

"Alright, well what kind of man is he? Is he the athletic type?"

Jean shook her head, "No."

"Alright, then the intellectual type?"

Jean considered it for a second and shook her head again, "No."

"Then the executive type," the man tried again.

"Uh-uh," Jean continued to shake her head.

"The outdoors type."

"Well, no," Jean answered.

The man tried again, "Perhaps he's the playboy type?"

Jean shook her head and laughed, "No, no, nope."

It was obvious the man hadn't had to deal with people like this before, and he told Jean, "I'm afraid there isn't much left."

"That's him!" Jean said humorously.

"Never mind, Jean, come on," Face said as he pulled her away.

"How can it be so hard to find something for one person?" she asked.

"That's Hannibal for you," Face answered, "He never likes doing anything the easy way, you know that."

"Still…" Jean looked at her watch and said, "Well look, let's get out of here, I want to get back to the V.A. and pick up Murdock, I don't want him getting too much exposure to the nuts down there."

"He already had 10 years' worth of it, I think he's immune to whatever they can throw at him now," Face told her.

They left the store, got in her car and drove to the hospital. Jean told Face to stay in the car and keep the engine on incase Briggs or the MPs or anybody came up and raided the place. She went in and found Richter's office and listened outside the door for a minute.

"I just don't get it, Doc," Murdock said, "Why do they do it? Why does anybody do it? It's never made any sense to me."

"It's not an easy question to answer, Murdock," Dr. Richter replied.

Jean threw the door open and said, "Sorry to interrupt, doc, but I've got to get Murdock home, we have plans for later that we've got to see to."

Murdock didn't look particularly put out by her barging in and said, "Is Face here?"

"Out in the car," Jean said, "Why don't you go join him? I want to have a word with the doctor for a minute."

Murdock looked like they'd hit on an important discovery by this little revelation and he said, "Alright, Saint," he turned to Richter and said, "See ya 'round, doc," and walked out the door. Jean kicked it shut behind him, then turned back to the doctor seated behind the desk and said as she pulled the chair out, "Alright, doc, let's talk."

"What about, Jean?" he asked.

"I want to see if it's possible to make one of you quacks want to shoot yourself after just _one_ session with someone," Jean said as she sat down.

"I take it that's your idea of a joke?" he asked.

"Murdock was talking to you about the Viet-Cong soldiers, wasn't he?" she asked, "Asking why and how they could torture people like they did, why anybody does it, what'd you tell him?"

"There's no simple answer to that question, Jean."

"And you're the professional," she reminded him, "So if anybody's going to know, it's going to be the head quack. What did you say, Richter? He was here long enough that you had to tell him something."

Richter managed to keep himself composed and he told her, "As I told Murdock, it's not an easy question to answer. Some people are more prone to violent behavior than others."

"Except we're not talking about a rare freak brain dysfunction," Jean said, "We're talking about hoards of people who are trained to be ruthless killers, it's not in their blood, it's their job, and they do it, some of them gladly, why? What makes a person that cold that they can turn butcher overnight?"

"Things are always different in a war zone, Jean, that has to be understood first," Richter started to explain.

"You're wrong, doc," Jean told him, "Oh so very wrong…this isn't about war, sure that has to do with _some_ cases, but there are other people who exhibit this same behavior in their everyday lives in otherwise civilian sectors that know no official, declared war, only the ones that exist in their minds, in their poor relations, we're not talking about North and South Korea or Vietnam, we're talking about people turning on their own kinds in their own countries, what makes somebody like that? You explain that one to me."

"I wish I could, Jean," he said, "But the truth of the matter is there is still a lot about the human psyche that we don't know about."

"Just as I figured," she said as she got up from the chair, "You don't have the answers anymore than we do, but _you're_ called the professionals, some pro. I could've given the same answer and it wouldn't cost someone $180 a session. You're partially right, doc, you may be the professional here but you still have a _lot_ to learn about people. Unfortunately I already know most of it."

Just when it seemed she would move towards the door, she dropped back down in the chair and said, "You explain this one to me, how does the brain work in people who find individual lives expendable but money which is printed up all the time in this world is worth killing for? That whole masses of people could be wiped out for the sake of keeping a business running? How does the brain justify that one?"

"I wish I could, Jean," Dr. Richter told her, "I'm sorry."

"Not half as sorry as I am," she replied as she got up again, and this time she did go to the door, and slammed it shut behind her.

Face and Murdock were sitting in the car waiting on her when she came out, Murdock moved over and asked as she got in, "What'd he say?"

Jean looked to him and said simply, "Doesn't matter. Let's go home."

* * *

"You know it isn't too often that I agree when you guys think Hannibal has lost his mind, but this is definitely one of those times," Jean told Face and Murdock as she wriggled in the new uniform Hannibal had had Face get for her, a colonel's uniform, "I feel ridiculous in this."

"You _look_ ridiculous in it," Face agreed.

"She does not," Murdock replied, and he told Jean, "Darling you look just perfect in it."

"I look like Decker, Murdock," she said.

"And that's perfect for what Hannibal's got planned," he said, "Now just calm down, and don't be nervous."

"I'm not nervous," she told him as she sat down, "I just don't see why I couldn't go in as planed last time."

"Well Hannibal doesn't want to take any chances incase somebody at the Federal Building remembers when we pulled this stunt with Decker," Face said, "And he figured a Colonel is less likely to draw attention to himself than a cleaning woman."

"Maybe but I still don't like this," she told him, "Though it should be interesting to see if _I'm_ a colonel, what Hannibal's coming dressed as."

They had parked her car a couple blocks away from the Federal Building and were coming up towards it in the dark; in addition to Jean being dressed like a colonel, Murdock and Face were also made up for the occasion like a couple of MPs so they could get back in without drawing any attention to themselves. Up ahead they were able to see two people coming their way but they realized it was just Hannibal and B.A., and when they saw Hannibal dressed as a general, Jean threw her head back laughing and about fell on her knees, but Murdock and Face grabbed her and pulled her back up.

"And I thought _I_ looked bad," she said.

"You do," Hannibal told her, "But it's perfect for what we're going to do."

B.A. snorted and said, "She looks bad, look at that crazy fool Murdock."

"What's wrong with me?" he wanted to know.

Jean took another look at him and noticed his helmet about covered his whole head and she said, "Well now that I think about it, you look more like Beetle Bailey than an MP."

Murdock barked and hissed in response.

"Now do you remember what I told you?" Hannibal asked.

"Yes, yes," she rolled her eyes, "Hannibal, before we go in, I got another idea."

"What's that?" he asked.

Jean pointed out to where all the MP cars were parked, and the men noticed how they were all lined up in a row, and Jean said, "We might as well provide a little truth in our advertising this time."

"What'd you have in mind?" he asked.

"Well now just suppose we manage to work the gas cap loose on one of those cars, and then," Jean reached into her jacket and pulled out an unraveled roll of firecrackers, taking away from some of her colonel physique, "String these up underneath them end to end, and light the fuse and then make a run for it, one spark hits the gas tank, it goes up in flames and spreads to the others."

"Will it work?" Face asked.

"I don't know, but I've always wanted to try," Jean said, "It's 10,000 firecrackers, that ought to be enough, shouldn't it?"

"One way to find out," Hannibal said, "Murdock, you get them in place."

"Why me?" Murdock asked.

"Because you're the scrawniest one of us here, just perfect for fitting under the cars," Jean told him.

"Okay," he seemed to find that answer suitable, and took the firecrackers from her.

A few minutes later Murdock crawled out from under one of the cars and made his way back to the others. Hannibal looked at his watch and said, "It's almost showtime, now remember what you're doing."

Everybody got into position. First Hannibal went into the building, and then a few minutes later, Jean entered with Murdock and Face alongside her and she called out loud enough for everyone on the ground floor to hear, "Gee, I wonder which General's car is on fire in the parking lot!" And as soon as she had said that, the firecrackers started going off.

* * *

Briggs' office was up on the second floor and for the most part it had been soundproofed to reduce outside interruptions, so he hadn't heard the commotion downstairs. He was going over the paperwork on his most recent escapade after the A-Team when he heard somebody knocking on his door.

"Come in," he said.

But the knocking persisted, so he looked up and raised his voice, "Come in!"

But whoever was on the other side of the door didn't open it up, so he got up from his desk, strode over to the door, jerked it open and yelled, "I SAID COME IN!"

"How do you do?" a middle aged man with shaggy gray hair in blue striped coveralls said as he came in pushing a cleaning cart, "Acme Window Cleaners at your service."

"Who the hell are you?" Briggs asked as he followed the man over to the windows behind his desk.

"Hmm? Oh, allow me to introduce myself, name's Lawrence Lawrence, I'm with the Acme Window Cleaners Company of Walla Walla, Washington, and if you can say that three times fast then good for you," the man said, "Whoops, forgot my lovely assistant." He turned his head back towards the door and called out, "Oh Tippy, would you come in here?"

Jean came in the room dressed similarly to Hannibal, grunting and groaning the entire time.

"What the hell is this?" Briggs demanded to know.

There was a knock on the door and Face and Murdock came in, still dressed in their MP uniforms and Face said with a salute, "Colonel, permission to see you for a minute?"

"What the hell is it now?" he asked. Clearly failing to catch the A-Team and coming back empty handed and now having to deal with an assortment of idiots wasn't setting well with him.

"We've just got a new lead on the whereabouts of the A-Team," Murdock said.

Now they had his attention. "Where?" he asked.

"Right here," Face said as he and Murdock pulled off their helmets.

Briggs did a double take and asked, "What the hell is this?"

"This?" Hannibal repeated, and said as he pulled off his false mustache and yanked off his wig, "This is the annual greeting from your local welcome wagon. How do you do? I'm Hannibal Smith, that is Templeton Peck, and our friend B.A. Baracus should be here shortly."

Briggs seemed to be recovering from his shock and said, "You've really stepped into this one, Smith."

"Right through your front door," he agreed, "Of course you know that's how I like to operate, I'm sure it's in the records that Decker left behind when he got the boot."

"And you don't really think you're going to get out of here, do you?" he asked.

"I don't see it as you having any choice," Hannibal said, and grabbed Jean by the arm and said, "Allow me to introduce our little friend, you may call her the Saint, but take my word for it she's anything but."

Jean flashed a grin like a shark about to open its mouth and say 'yum', then resumed her scowl.

"Oh yeah?" Briggs asked, "And just what is _she_ doing here?"

Jean blinked and turned to Hannibal and said, "You hear that, Hannibal? He doesn't even remember me!"

"I give up, should I?" Briggs cynically asked, clearly not amused by what was going on there in his office.

"Humph," Hannibal snorted, "Maybe her face would ring a bell if she was knocked on the ground, or do you make a general habit out of shoving women around?"

"Why not?" Jean asked, "Guys of this breed are generally set at the speed for beating their kids and choking their wives, I've seen it a hundred times."

"And this makes 101," Murdock added.

Briggs was unfazed by these comments though, he looked straight ahead to Hannibal and said, "The A-Team delivered right into my office," he chuckled and said, "I don't believe it."

"Yeah well you know what they say about things that seem too good to be true," Hannibal replied, "They usually _are_."

"And just what makes you think you're going to be getting out of here anyway other than carried out on your back?" Briggs asked him.

"How about the fact that we already did once today?" Murdock asked.

"What?"

"Perhaps they told you when you got in tonight," Hannibal said, "About having workers in from the phone company."

"The power company," Face added.

"The exterminator's," Murdock threw in.

Now Briggs looked like he was about to have a heart attack. "You mean you were right here in my office while I was off chasing those idiots this morning?"

"Now that's not a nice thing to say about the idiots," Murdock said, "Even if they are."

"Yes, Briggs, we were here," Hannibal said with his trademark grin on his face, "We added our own little touches to the place."

"Certainly, like this telephone," Murdock said, and picking up the receiver he said into the mouthpiece, "Hello?"

"Gimme that, Murdock," Jean took it from him and said, "Yes? You say you've got a dead horse in front of your house on Ticonderoga Street? Okay we'll be right over, now how do you spell Ticonderoga? Oh you don't either? Well then drag him over to First Street!" she slammed the receiver down repeatedly and said, pounding her chest, "I have to think of everything around here!" Then she picked the receiver up again and asked, "You get all that, B.A.?"

"You tapped _my_ phone line?" Briggs couldn't believe it.

"Well how else were we supposed to know when you got back in?" Face asked.

"This is unbelievable," Briggs said, more to himself than the rest of them.

"And the fun's just starting," Hannibal told him.

Briggs looked back to Hannibal and asked, "And what's that supposed to mean?"

The office suddenly being plunged into darkness seemed like a good first answer. When the lights went out everybody sprang in different directions; they'd been in Decker's office enough times to know the general layout, whereas Briggs was still getting used to everything so they had the upper hand there. Hannibal and Face dealt with Briggs, taking turns hitting him with whatever they got their hands on in the dark; Murdock and Jean ran for the door and raced out into the hall as everybody else was running around like decapitated chickens and in the dark and confusion and frenzy didn't have any idea who was running alongside them. When they came to a clearing in the main hall, Jean ripped off her coveralls and stripped down to an olive drab army shirt and fatigues that she'd had on under them, all that was left of her Colonel's uniform from a few minutes ago.

"Now it's our turn," she told Murdock, and they turned a corner and took off after some of the rampaging MPs.

Murdock clotheslined one MP and then jumped on the back of another and tackled him to the ground; Jean managed to come by one roughly her own size and she grabbed him by the front of his jacket and applied enough force to actually life him off the ground as she slammed him into the wall behind him. When she dropped him she punched him in the face and he went out like a light. There was a spark and some of the overhead lights came back on in the corridor, though they were much dimmer than before.

"Uh-oh," Murdock said as he got off of the unconscious MP he had single handedly dogpiled on.

"It's alright, look!" Jean pointed and they saw B.A. coming their way.

"Where' Hannibal and Face?" the Sergeant asked.

Murdock pointed back to Briggs's office and they ran back in to see what luck the Colonel and Lieutenant had been having with the new Colonel. They saw that Hannibal and Face had apparently had a very good string of luck in mopping the floor with Briggs. Now that the lights were back on he was able to see his assailants and the fact that they'd already managed to make him look like a grape had no effect on him; he was staring daggers at both of them and if looks could kill, he'd have both members of the A-Team underground already.

"Hannibal, we gotta go, the cavalry's coming!" Jean said.

"Sorry, Briggs," Hannibal said as he delivered one final punch to the colonel's stomach, "But I've got a prior engagement with your yes-men from downstairs. But I'll be back shortly."

Briggs got back to his feet and collected his sidearm from the desk and got a few rounds off, missing Hannibal like he was the broad side of a barn, and the A-Team made a quick exit from his office and took off for parts unknown in the rest of the building.

The MPs were storming the halls like medieval peasants storming a castle in an old monster movie, and everybody had their own corner. Jean rounded the corner where she had been painting the wall earlier that day, and found the new can of paint that Face had been sure to replace the wall off-white with California Raisin purple that came with the lid already off. When half a dozen MPs came storming down the hall she jumped out and threw the paint on them, then tossed the can at the one nearest her and hit him in the face with it as she took off running. Down on the opposite side of the floor, Hannibal bombarded three other MPs with a 5 gallon bucket of cold water, followed immediately after by Face tossing an open bag of flour on them.

"Now," he told Hannibal, "If we could just wrap them up in newspaper, wait a week, we'd have a nice sized piñata on our hands."

Murdock and Jean came running up behind them and each grabbed one of the MPs and knocked them to the floor and then knocked them out, leaving Face to deal with the third one in the same manner.

"Hannibal!" they heard B.A. call out from somewhere else on the floor.

"Uh oh, that doesn't sound good," Face said.

"For who though?" Hannibal asked.

They went back the way they had come and found B.A. had had his hands full with several other MPs and by now had either tossed them across the room, down the stairs, bashed their heads into the wall, or otherwise just beaten the living daylights out of them and they had to step over the pile of sore and unconscious bodies covering the floor.

"Where's Briggs?" Face asked.

"Ain't seen him," B.A. answered.

"Well this might be a good time for us to make our exit," Face said.

"Not yet," Hannibal told him.

They heard the sound of men charging up the stairs and Hannibal said, "Now!"

"Everybody step this way please," Murdock said as he led the chase, "Over to the janitorial detour and do watch out for those spontaneous ammonia combustions."

Hannibal skidded to a halt at the closet door and picked up one of the large containers of ammonia and used it to spray the little green men that tried ambushing them. The cleaning chemicals burnt their skin and eyes and temporarily blinded them and held them back, but Hannibal knew it wouldn't be long, so he picked up a second container that had been specifically mixed up to explode, and lit the fuse on it and tossed it out in the middle of the floor and joined the others down the back stairs next to the currently out of order elevator.

"Never a dull moment with you guys is it?" Jean asked as they scrambled down the steps.

"I think we got our point across to Briggs," Hannibal said, "Now let's get out of here and wait for him to make the next move."

They hit the ground floor running and tore out the building's back exit and split up, getting into B.A.'s van and Jean's car and they tore out of there, not that it mattered much because most of the cars had been blown up and burnt beyond all use when they first went in.

"Hoo boy, Face, that was fun!" Murdock said as they sped off in Jean's convertible.

"Yeah but don't go making a habit out of it, Murdock," Face told him, "Now that Briggs knows how we did it I doubt we'll be able to get in that place again."

"Are you kidding me?" Murdock asked, "I've got a great idea for how we can get in there next time."

His idea however was cut short when they heard Hannibal coming through on the car radio. Face picked it up and said into the microphone, "Hey Hannibal, ask Jean what we should do with her car until the morning."

"What're you talking about, Face?" Hannibal replied, "She didn't come with us."

"She didn't?" Face felt a streak of panic starting to climb up his spine.

"I thought she went with you guys in her car," Hannibal told him.

"Well she didn't!" Face responded.

Through the corner of his eye he was able to see the look of terror that had made itself at home in Murdock's own eyes as he realized what was going on. "If she's not with us and she's not with Hannibal, where is she?"

Face shook his head helplessly, he didn't have any idea.

"Hold on, just hang on a minute," Hannibal told them over the radio, "I made sure before Jean put that colonel's outfit on that it had a bug in it so incase we got separated tonight we'd be able to find her at least." They heard some low commotion from the other vehicle as Hannibal checked the radar, and he came back on and they could almost hear him shaking his head as he said, "This doesn't look good."

"What is it?" Face asked.

"If this blip's right, Jean's back at the Federal Building," Hannibal said.

"What would she be doing there?" Murdock asked, "She got out of the place with us, why would she go back?"

* * *

Why had Jean gone back to the Federal Building after they'd just made a clean getaway? Very simple, she went back to find Briggs. The place was still a madhouse but between the smoldering MP cars and everybody who had gotten their stuffing knocked out of them, she didn't have too many obstacles blocking her way as she made her way up the stairs and through the corridors. She returned to Briggs's office, and was mildly disappointed to find he wasn't there. Still, she didn't see anyone else around either so she went in and rummaged through the drawers on his desk. She wasn't looking for anything in particular but she wanted to see what there was that could tell her anything about this new colonel. She'd hardly had time to feel around for anything before she heard somebody yelling at her and saw it was Briggs standing in the doorway.

Jean got up from the desk, and instead of trying to run past Briggs, she turned around, picked up his chair and hurled it at the window, shattering it into a million pieces, and when the glass had cleared she jumped out. A two story leap is never an easy landing on the ankles but she managed to make a fairly soft land in the grass down below and took off running, she knew that Briggs would be behind her and that he would catch up to her soon. He caught her just as she reached the street behind the building where another MP sedan was kept; Briggs tackled her to the ground and they were rolling around trying to kill each other. Somehow, when Briggs wasn't looking, Jean managed to take a pair of handcuffs out of her pocket and snap them on his fat wrists; he couldn't believe it, she just stared at him with a sinister grin on her face. She reached into his jacket, pulled his gun out of his holster and ordered him to get up and into the car. Once she had him in, she found the keys and drove them out of there.

"And just what in the hell do you think you're doing?" Briggs wanted to know.

Jean didn't answer him. She didn't even acknowledge that she'd heard him. She just kept her eyes on the road ahead and kept her mind on her work later. After a while, they came to a street that was very familiar to Jean and she pulled up at the curb outside from Hannibal's apartment building. She made Briggs get out of the car and forced him to walk in and up the stairs to Hannibal's room. At this time of the night most of the other residents were already asleep and there wasn't anyone around to watch this little spectacle. Once they got inside, Jean locked the door and forced Briggs into the living room. Very calmly she explained that she was going to unlock the cuffs, but that Briggs wouldn't have much time to do whatever he planned to do. He didn't understand what she meant but he got a good idea when, just before she unlocked the handcuffs, with a mastered sleight of hand, she pulled a syringe out of her pocket and jabbed him in the neck with it.

"What the hell did you give me?" he demanded to know as the key popped the right cuff off his wrist.

"You'll find out soon enough," Jean said as she removed the other cuff.

As soon as his hands were free, Briggs knocked her back and threw her to the floor, and he hovered over her and snaked his hands in her shirt and tried to find out what she'd done with his gun. But then, he stopped, and he looked at her with a glare of horrified realization in his eyes as he suddenly found himself unable to move. Jean pushed him off of her and knocked him to the ground instead and as she got up she said, "The general rule on those hospital paralytics is 90 seconds to start taking effect, but I guess you just take it in faster than most." She reached one hand down the waistband of her fatigues and watched Briggs's eyes widen as she pulled out a large KA-BAR and held it up for the light to catch on the blade.

"I told Hannibal it made no sense they never carried knives wherever they went," she said, as she took a step closer to Briggs she held it down at his eye level so he could get a better look at it and she told him, "Nice big one…all the better to _gut_ you with my dear…say goodnight, Briggs." And she slowly drew the knife back and high up over her head, before plunging it down and forth at a record speed. Briggs screamed, but it was short lived.


	8. Chapter 8

When it was over, Jean sat on the floor next to Briggs's body. Something had happened and she had lapsed into something almost resembling a trance. Everything seemed to be in slow motion now and she just sat with her legs crossed Indian style and looked straight ahead but saw nothing. She lazily stuck her hand down the neck of her shirt and felt along her shoulder for a few minutes before she heard somebody coming up the stairs. Then she got up, straightened her clothes out and went to the door and opened it, and saw Hannibal and the others about to bust the door open.

"Come on in, sorry about the mess," she said, her voice tired and low, like a windup toy that was slowly winding down.

Hannibal moved past her, then Face and B.A., Murdock brought up the rear and was the first to really notice her and how disheveled she was. He put his hands on her in a partial embrace and asked her, "What happened, Saint, are you alright?"

Jean welcomed the human contact and eased into it and wrapped one arm around him in return and answered tiredly, "Hey Murdock, yeah, I'm fine."

"What _happened_ here?" Hannibal asked from the living room where they were all gathered around Briggs.

"I did what you said," Jean told him as she pulled away from Murdock, "I just decided to do it now, instead of waiting."

"Did he suffer long?" Face asked.

"No, he went rather quickly," Jean answered, sounding a bit disappointed.

Murdock patted her shoulder supportively and tightened his hold on her.

"How did you get him up here?" Hannibal asked.

"Wasn't easy," she said, "Hardest part was making sure he didn't talk, anytime he opened his mouth I gave him a poke between the shoulder blades with his own pistol."

They walked into the living room and joined the others and all of them stood hovered over Briggs's unconscious body, which was bound by handcuffs and his own belt, and was still bruised from the fight earlier that night, but otherwise he didn't have a mark on him.

"Nice work, kid," Hannibal said, "But why didn't you wait for us?"

Jean thought about it and finally explained, "Briggs already saw some of what you're capable of…I wanted him to see what _I_ was capable of. I made him scream." That simple statement seemed to be equally full of pride and disgust.

"I botched it though," she said, and picked up the knife she demonstrated, "To gut him I shouldn't have done a down and slash, instead it should've been an underhanded thrust and jab, but when the drug kicked in he fell to the floor, that was no way to gut somebody."

"I doubt he'll remember it anyway when he comes to," Hannibal said.

"But how did you know combining the paralytic drug with the knockout drug would work, instead of them responding to each other and killing him?" Murdock asked Jean.

She shrugged and said, "I didn't. Imagine my disappointment when I check and his heart's still kicking."

"Ah well, better luck next time," Face said in his usual patronizing tone when he pretended to agree with Murdock about something crazy.

Hannibal tested the rigidity of Briggs's body and found he was perfectly limp and perfect for posing. He called to Jean for the keys to the cuffs while he went to work unbuckling the belt that kept his legs tied together.

"Murdock, get the camera," Jean said as she tossed Hannibal the keys, then strode over to the couch and picked up the brassiere Amy had brought over earlier, "It's picture time!"

"Oh good!" Murdock screamed ecstatically as he grabbed the camera off the table, "Everybody get into position."

First, Face and Hannibal pulled Briggs to his feet and despite the man being unconscious, they got on either side of him and kept him upright as they posed with him looking very chummy, and Face told the unconscious man, "Say 'I'm ruined'!"

Murdock got one picture off, and then B.A. moved in and kept the back of Briggs's jacket balled up in his fist to keep the man standing as he got his own picture taken with the slime ball colonel.

Jean came up behind them and snaking her hands around to the front managed to get the bra on over Briggs's jacket but getting all the twists and kinks out of it took a little more work, and then getting it hooked was another one altogether.

"He's fatter than he looks," she was practically laughing as she stretched the elastic as far as it would go before exploding entirely. "Alright, Hannibal, how shall we do it this time, him standing?"

"No, let's put him on the couch," Hannibal said.

As they each grabbed an end and carried him over, Hannibal grunted, "Why did you bring him here of all places?"

"He doesn't know this place and I knew you wouldn't be home, so he can't put the pieces together who lives here," Jean explained, "Besides, it's only temporary, once we get done using him as a centerfold we'll be ditching him, right?"

"Something like that," Hannibal answered as they dropped him on the couch.

"Oh, Hannibal, that won't work," Murdock said as he joined them, "That looks all wrong."

"What's the matter with it?" the others wanted to know.

Murdock looked at the man lying on the couch as he tried to figure out what the problem was. Finally it hit him and he ran into the bathroom, and came back with Kleenex and cotton balls and stuffed them into Briggs's mouth. The others couldn't figure out what he was doing, until they saw the finished product; Briggs's cheeks and mouth were stuffed full and then closed again, by now his jaws looked twice the size they did and altogether it presented the illusion that he was smiling, not merely smiling but had a huge grin on his face.

"If this doesn't get him the boot, nothing will," Jean noted.

Murdock raised the camera and took a step back to get the whole thing in the shot and pressed the button.

"Oh I don't know," Face said, "I was thinking a nice little affair hitting the papers would put him in a fine mess."

Jean shook her head and said, "Sex scandals only affect politicians and clergymen, not government or military officials, but one of their few and proud decked out in women's pink lacey underthings, now _that's_ going to get him tossed out on his head. It's only too bad we don't have time to get another picture with him in a dress."

"Especially if we could do it next to a sign that says 'Toronto: population 2 million'," Murdock added.

"The ones we've got will do just fine," Hannibal told them, "Now onto the next step of the plan."

"Hannibal," Face said, "Incidentally just how many steps _are_ there to this plan?"

"Ten, why?" Hannibal asked humorously.

"Oh no reason," Face replied, while rolling his eyes.

Hannibal turned his attention to Jean and said, "By the way, you didn't tell him who you were, did you?"

"Now _why_ would I do something stupid like that?" she asked.

"Good," Hannibal grinned, "Then the next part ought to go perfectly."

"Just to refresh my memory, what _is_ the next part?" Face asked.

"Hannibal," Jean interrupted, "Those knockout drugs are supposed to work for an hour but the paralytics are only good for 20 minutes, you don't think they'll cancel each other out, do you?"

"I doubt we could get that lucky," he replied, "Now come on, let's go."

"Hannibal, what _are_ we doing next?" Face wanted to know.

"Remember a few months back when we tried that gaslight bit with Decker?" Hannibal asked, "Well we don't have Jean's house at our disposal to use but I know a place we can take him that it should work. Granted we won't have a lot of props to work with this time, but I think our performances alone should work. What do you think, Captain?"

"Oh…" Murdock looked caught off guard and he recovered and said, "Quite so, Colonel, but it's to my understanding that the best actors are those that can give a full performance _without_ a script and instead rely on their own creative talents."

"I'm glad you said that," Hannibal said, "Because you and Jean are going to be the main stars of this show."

"Oh boy," Face rolled his eyes.

* * *

When Briggs came to, he was still lying on the floor, he opened his eyes and immediately closed them again because the light was bright and the room was white making one migraine inducing glare.

"About time you woke up."

He knew that voice. Trying to pull himself up, he got his eyes open again and saw that same woman from earlier, sitting across from him in a corner of the room. She was sitting on the floor, her legs crossed over one another, and her arms folded against each other as well, she wore a long white shirt that for some reason reminded him of a straitjacket. How appropriate, he thought. But then that made him think of something else, he looked up and saw they were in a strange room; it wasn't padded but it definitely looked like a place for keeping crazy people.

"Where the hell are we?" he demanded to know as he stood up.

Jean stayed on the floor and told him, "Asylum."

"What?" he turned to her.

She nodded and explained bluntly, "This is where they put all insane criminals."

Briggs laughed dryly and pointed at her, "That explains what _you're_ doing here, but what am _I_ doing here?"

"Very simple, you're insane too," she answered, and even though he stood three feet taller than her at the moment, she leaned over as if she was leaning in to him and asked, "Haven't you noticed your personality splitting lately?" and she laughed like a maniac.

Briggs took a step back from her as if it were catching, and he demanded to know, "Who are you? What is your connection to the A-Team?"

"A-Team? A-Team?" she said it again a few times as if she was trying it out to see how it sounded, and she elaborated, "A-Team, B-Team, first string, second string, he shoots, he scores, two points!" Ever a professional in the sport of head games and screwing with people's minds, she remained very deadpan as she spoke, and hardly moved, her eyes never widened, her head hardly moved, there was no readable emotion or expression to be found anywhere on her face.

Briggs ignored her babbling and looked around the room for the door leading out, but it was to his surprise that there didn't seem to be one, the white walls just went on and on and around and around, and he realized that the room was octagonal. All there was besides the white walls were two large mirrors, no doubt with somebody outside the room looking in at them. Briggs only made it two steps towards the mirror when Jean started laughing nervously and he turned and saw her rocking back and forth as she sat on the floor.

"Billy be quiet, he don't want to hear about that," she said.

Now Briggs was confused, "Who?"

"Billy," Jean looked up at him and explained, "The dog, the little dog…" she pointed, but all Briggs saw was air.

"A dog?" he repeated.

"Dog?" Jean echoed, and then she straightened up and said firmly, "Not my dog, I don't like dogs, I hate dogs, they shed and they bite and they never stop barking! All day long, bark bark bark, all night long, yap yap yap, gets to be too much after a while, you know? Just gotta," she raised an imaginary gun and fired, "Ba-bam ba-bam ba-bam, then all's nice and quiet again."

She was laughing again, but it was different now, and Briggs watched her, though she hardly moved and nothing changed, something else was different now. It was like Jean had suddenly hit a switch and turned into another person. She climbed to her feet but she stood hunched over, the gestures she was making indicated she thought she was shooting billiards.

"I always told them," she said, "This is a war, this is a mean business, if the job's to do some killing, then you do it, if you can't cut it then get back behind your mama's skirts, got to be a man, not some crybaby. I told them, 'I am a Marine, this is my rifle, it is my life, dirty weapon's gonna blow up in your face'." She laughed again and said, "Just like swatting flies, just like 'Nam."

Now Briggs _really_ didn't know what the hell was going on. He moved over towards one wall and started feeling his way along them, trying to find the doorway leading out of there, he knew there _had_ to be one somewhere, it was just a matter of finding it, otherwise how had they both gotten tossed in here? Jean just stayed on the floor where she was and continued to ramble to herself as Briggs checked every wall in the room, and to his displeasure he found that there was no door.

"What the hell is going on around here?" he said more to himself than to the other occupant of the room. He went back to the large mirror and started pounding on it with his fist, "Smith! Peck! I know you're out there, what the hell is this?"

"And people said I was crazy," Jean shook her head as she sat back on the floor and re-crossed her limbs, "Dude's talking to a mirror."

"I am _not_ crazy," Briggs told her.

"That's what we all say," she replied, "But after a while you come around…when you've been here long enough, it all starts to kick in. First they take away your clothes, and then they drag you out to the front yard in the middle of the night and make you stand in the snow and they throw ice water on you."

"What snow?" Briggs asked, "This is Los Angeles!"

Jean looked up at him in puzzlement, and laughed and said, "Dude's really lost it, he thinks we're in California, you've been here long enough you ought to know better than that."

"I want answers, now who the hell are you?" Briggs asked her.

"I don't know," she replied, "They took my name away a long time ago…in here you don't even get a number like in jail, you're just 'that patient' 'that headcase'. Unless you're somebody special like Murdock, then they refer to you as the Baskin Case, 31 flavors of crazy."

Briggs turned and glared at her, "Murdock?"

"Who's Murdock?" Jean asked.

"You just said his name."

"Who's name?" she asked him.

"Murdock's."

"Who's Murdock?"

"Captain H.M. Murdock of the A-Team, he was their pilot in 'Nam, and he's their pilot now, and you know all of that because you're helping them."

"I am?" Jean asked, "Oh that would be nice, I'd like to help somebody, maybe they let crazy people off with good behavior too."

"Have to admit, Hannibal," Face said from where they stood on the other side of the two way mirrors, "She's good at playing crazy."

"She was married to Murdock, she'd have to be an expert in that field by now," B.A. replied.

Murdock ignored that comment and peered in through the mirror and watched the show. "Hey Hannibal, how long are we gonna leave her in there?"

"Well, I _do_ believe if we leave her in there long enough, she'll drive Briggs completely past the certifiable point," Hannibal said, "We'll join them in a couple of minutes, but _this_ is a show that makes it well worth the wait."

Murdock was the first one to go in; he entered the room in a white doctor's coat that was buttoned up and went all the way down to his sneakers.

"Murdock!" Briggs exclaimed in disbelief.

"Who?" Murdock asked, "I'm the doctor."

"Oh doctor, doctor," Jean said as she got up and went to him, "When can I get out of here?"

"Uh…" Murdock pulled out a pocket watch and said, "Checkout time's 5 o' clock. Now," he put his hands on her face so she'd look straight ahead, "We start our tests for the day."

"What the hell kind of a gag is this?" Briggs got in Murdock's face.

"I'm sorry, as a general rule I don't use gags," Murdock told him in that dull, sterile tone that doctors use, "Unless you start biting, then I will, and I'll have to tranquilize you too so I really wouldn't recommend trying it. Now," Murdock turned his attention back to Jean, reaching into his pocket he pulled out a few 10 and 20 dollar bills and held them in front of her and asked, "How many bills do you see?"

Jean followed the bills hypnotically and grabbed them away and started thumbing through them, but Murdock snatched them back and said, "Now I _know_ you're not crazy."

There was a knock at the door and Face and Hannibal came into the room also wearing doctor's coats, and scrubs, and Briggs noticed that Face's white clothes were covered with blood stains.

"Oh now what the hell is _this_?" he asked them.

"Doctor," Hannibal said to Murdock, "You're wanted in surgery."

"Oh so sorry to leave," Murdock said to Briggs.

"That's alright, Doctor," Face said, "He's going to be coming with us…he's the patient."

"I'm the WHAT?" Briggs exploded.

"Patient, fool!" B.A. said as he burst into the room pushing a gurney. Hannibal and Face grabbed Briggs and shoved him forward and he landed face down on the gurney, tied down with two large straps over the back of his midsection, and the gurney made a quick U-turn and scrambled back out the door. During the midst of all the confusion, Briggs was completely oblivious to the fact that he had been stuck with another needle and after a minute he succumbed to unconsciousness once again.

"So how was it?" Jean asked.

Hannibal grinned around his cigar and answered, "Beautiful, kid, you were perfect."

Face was laughing as they undid the restraints and said, "Wouldn't it be something if by the time we were done, Briggs was suitable for getting a room at the V.A.?"

"I wonder if they've put anyone else in my room yet," Murdock thought.

"I have to admit, Hannibal, I'm surprised at how well this worked out," Face told him, "We want Briggs to think he's in the mental hospital so we put him in a hospital set at the movie studio."

"Well when I saw that set for the isolation room, I knew it would be perfect," Hannibal said, "Without the traditional fourth wall it's going to be tricky for the camera work but it was perfect for what we needed. Besides it would be easier than trying to find a vacant padded room at the V.A."

"So what's the next part of the plan?" Jean asked.

"Remember why I had you two fly over his house to check it out for security measures the other day?" Hannibal replied.

"Me without a camera," Jean shook her head, "This is certainly going to be a night to remember."

"Yeah, right up there with the sinking of the Titanic," Face added.

* * *

This time when Briggs woke up, he was in his own bed in his own house, and as he started to remember the earlier events of the night he couldn't help wondering if it had all been a crazy dream. He pulled down the covers and saw that he was dressed for bed in his flannel pajamas and he started to consider the possibility that it had all been a long, bad dream.

And then something exploded downstairs.

As Briggs shot out of bed he thought about the loud booming noise he'd heard and realized it didn't sound like somebody was attacking him, rather it sounded like somebody had gotten the garbage disposal to blow up. He didn't get a chance to find out what it was though, because before he could even set foot over towards the door, it opened up and Hannibal came in, followed by B.A., and Jean, but Face and Murdock weren't with them. However, the Captain and the Lieutenant could be heard down the hall arguing about something as they came closer, and then they came to the door, and each tried to walk in at the same time and they got stuck in the doorway.

"Faceman, don't make me call in all the favors you owe me," Murdock said.

"Come on, Murdock, favors I owe you? Like what?"

"Alright," Murdock turned on his heel and looked at the Lieutenant and said, "Remember when we had that double date with those two women?"

"Oh come on, Murdock."

"And you took the prettiest girl for yourself."

"What's that got to do with anything?" Face asked.

"You always do that you know," Murdock reminded him.

"What was the matter with your date?" Face asked.

"_Yours_ had teeth!" Murdock pointed out.

"Yours had teeth too, Murdock," Face replied.

"Did you see that tooth?" Murdock asked him.

"Yes," Face nodded.

"My date had so much bridgework done that every time I kissed her I had to pay toll," Murdock said.

"Oh great, here we go with the Abbott and Costello jokes again," Face groaned.

"Hey," Jean poked Murdock in his chest to get his attention, "Hey, when was that?"

"Oh that was a couple years ago," Murdock said, "That was before I met you," he smiled at her and said, "Don't worry, darling, she didn't mean anything to me."

"I guess not," she chuckled, "Though who said I was worried?"

"What the hell are you doing in my house?" Briggs asked Hannibal.

"Well while you were catching up on your Z's, we decided to get the royal tour," Hannibal answered, "Lovely place you've got here, kind of big for one guy though, are you married or happy?"

Jean snorted and said, "Any woman dumb enough to marry Briggs would be practicing carving a triangle in her stomach with the kitchen knives."

Briggs got in Jean's face and demanded to know, "Who the hell _are_ you?"

Jean pointed to Murdock and said, "I'm his wife."

"His _what_?"

"You see," Hannibal was hardly able to keep himself in check as he told Briggs, "Colonel Decker had the _exact_ same response when he found out, that's what I love about you army guys, nothing ever changes except the colonels."

"Wait-wait-wait a minute," Briggs ordered, "What do you mean wife?"

"Well you see, Briggs," Hannibal said, "Before you came around for the second round, Murdock got himself discharged from the V.A., so he could get married to our friend Jean here…"

"You can't be serious, Smith," Briggs told him.

And as if they hadn't had enough surprises for that night, into the bedroom stepped former Colonel Roderick Decker, still in his uniform, and he told Briggs, "That's what I said, just be thankful _you_ don't have to fly with her."

"And what are _you_ doing here, Decker?" Briggs asked.

"Who says we're here?" Face asked.

"What?"

"Remember A Christmas Carol, Briggs?" Hannibal asked, "Well perhaps you should just consider us the ghosts of Christmas here and now. I'm sure that come morning when you wake up you won't remember _any_ of this."

"That is until," Face added, "General Bullen gets those posterity photos we got of you tonight."

"We didn't get any of those," Murdock said, "We had him facing front."

Jean said nothing and only smacked him in the back of the head for his comment.

"I imagine come tomorrow morning it'll be a wonder if they don't just line you up against the wall and shoot you," Hannibal said, "Considering everything that's gone on tonight." He turned to Face and asked him, "Lieutenant, exactly what all _has_ gone on tonight?"

"Let's see," Face pulled a long piece of paper out of his pocket and read through the charges, "Four wanted fugitives gain access to the Federal Building and are able to come and go freely _twice_ in one day," he cleared his throat and added, "Damages and vandalism to the phones, the power, about half a dozen people hospitalized from bug bombs, the entire building gets plunged into darkness when some plastic explosives go off by the main power grid. Several MPs hospitalized for injuries obtained during a fight, also three MPs get turned into walking piles of glue, three more have to be turpentined and the floors have to be repainted to get rid of those purple footprints leading all over the second floor. One MP car is blown up, all the rest are subsequently set on fire, one other has been carjacked and consequently driven off the road and crashed into a ditch where it was left totaled. I imagine the cost of damages alone is going to run into the hundred thousand dollars range easily."

"Congratulations, Colonel Briggs," Hannibal said, "You've managed in one night to complete the same amount of damage and humiliation to the military and the government that it took Colonel Lynch a course of 10 years to commit."

"Gee, Hannibal, what do you think?" Face asked, "Should we give him his gun back incase he gets hungry?"

Hannibal shook his head, "Too easy," he turned his attention to the man standing next to him and asked, "What do you think, Roderick? I'm sure we've left you with that oh so familiar bad taste in your mouth, that kicked dog feeling that everybody experiences upon being met with sudden failure…what do you think is most fitting for our friend Briggs here?"

Decker had that sickening smirk on his face like he was going to enjoy ripping somebody's guts out with a rock. He went over to Briggs, got in his face and said, "Colonel," in a mocking tone, and continued, "You took this position from me and I'm going to personally see to it that you never stand at this rank again. Your miseries are going to be my damn mission in life second only to bringing these people in. When I'm reinstated as a Colonel and you get bumped down to your first stripe, I'm going to see to it that you're on the first plane heading out to Alaska, so pack warm."

Briggs wasn't ready to give up yet, and he addressed them all with the question, "And what makes you think I'm just going to let you walk out of here?"

"Well what choice have you?" Jean asked, taking the lead now, "There's six of us against one of you, they have your guns, they already took out your phones, your alarm system, your cameras, anything and everything that could lead to you calling out for backup, or to prove that we were even here tonight. And come tomorrow morning, the five of us are boarding a plane heading out to Hong Kong to rescue a Chinese councilman's daughter, you'll never be able to catch us in time." She leaned in to him and added, "And, if by some chance of dumb luck you do manage to keep your job and your position, the next time you try coming after the A-Team, you're going to have _me_ to deal with too, and Roddy can tell you _all_ about what that experience is like." She got in his face and concluded, spitting as she spoke, "Ta-ta."

With that, they turned and in a single file they left Briggs's bedroom and went down the stairs and out the front door. B.A.'s van and Decker's car were parked out at the curb, the others went over to the van as Hannibal and Decker stopped to exchange a few final words.

"Well, I think that ought to do it," Hannibal said.

"If Bullen keeps Briggs on as a janitor after this I'm going to be surprised," Decker replied.

Hannibal laughed and said, "Well it wouldn't be any fun without you chasing after us, you know that."

"Likewise, Smith," Decker actually smiled a little as he responded, "I'm not too eager to find out what the world will be like the day the A-Team is shut down."

"Which is why that's never going to happen," Hannibal told him, "You need the chase, and we need the exercise."

The two men chuckled and shook hands in a parting gesture.

"Merry Christmas, Decker," Hannibal said, with a grin on his face and a newfound light in his blue eyes.

Decker tried to contain himself and failed, his own grin broke through as he replied, "Merry Christmas, Smith. You know, this night has almost been fun."

Hannibal turned and walked over to the van, where Face, Jean and Murdock were all seated on the back bumper as Murdock kicked his feet together and hummed "Snoopy's Christmas".

"We ready to go, Hannibal?" B.A. asked.

"Yeah, B.A., let's go home," Hannibal answered.

The others got up from the fender and opened the back doors to get in.

"By the way, Jean," Hannibal said, "Where'd you come up with that idea of Hong Kong? Oh, it's a nice suggestion, but it's too outrageous, Briggs is never going to believe we're going there."

"That's why I said it," Jean told him, "He knows one place where we're _not_ going to be, but he's never going to be able to figure out where we are or be able to catch us."

"You're rubbing off on her," Face said.

Hannibal laughed and said, "Well, there are worse things to be."

He climbed into the front with B.A. and as they drove away into the night, Murdock stopped humming and started singing, and some of that old Christmas magic must've already been taking effect because for once B.A. kept his own mouth shut and just laughed. As they drove along, the others finally gave in and joined Murdock as he continued to butcher the Royal Guardsmen's classic Christmas song.

"The Baron had Snoopy dead in his sights,

He reached for the trigger, to pull up tight,

Why he didn't shoot, well we'll never know,

Or was it the bells from the village below?

The Baron made Snoopy fly to the Rhine,

And forced him to land behind the enemy line,

Snoopy was certain that this was the end,

When the Baron cried out 'Merry Christmas, mein friend!'

The Baron then offered a holiday toast,

And Snoopy our hero saluted his host,

And then with a roar, they were both on their way,

Each knowing they'd meet on some other day.

Christmas bells, those Christmas bells, ringing through the land,

Bringing peace to all the world, and goodwill to men."

"It's certainly starting to look that way," Hannibal commented as he gazed out the window and saw the streets all brightly lit up for the upcoming holiday.


	9. Chapter 9

It was somewhere between 2 and 3 in the morning by the time they finally got back to Jean's house. Everybody was tired and nobody was going to get much sleep but everybody was grateful to collapse in their own beds and succumb to their own unconsciousness for the remainder of the night. Last one asleep and first one up always, Hannibal made the rounds before he turned in for the night; he was sure that everybody was alright, but it was an old habit that could die hard but it wasn't dead yet. Downstairs, B.A. was already asleep and snoring loud enough to wake up people in Bangkok, upstairs in the room next to his own, Face was lost in la-la land most likely with some blonde from his little black book, that was two down, and two to go. The door to Jean's room was only open about an inch, but it was enough to see the lights; while they were decorating, Murdock had taken it upon himself to string up some colored lights in Jean's window so they could see each other when they were in bed. Hannibal stopped at the door and listened, it was quiet, so he pushed the door open a little and looked in.

Covered in shades of green and red and blue, Murdock and Jean were both changed in their pajamas for the night and had fallen asleep in each other's arms; Murdock's body was half sprawled over Jean's but that didn't see to be disturbing her sleep tonight. Hannibal had half of a mind to go in and straighten them up and out and get them off of each other, but decided against it; he thought about when they were married, an experience that in theory had been a good idea, but in practice it left something to be desired. Oddly enough, they seemed to be closer now that they weren't married than when they were; but of course time had passed, they'd had more time to get used to one another, to get closer, to know each other better. Maybe that had something to do with it, he wasn't sure, but damn they looked cute at each other's sides these days.

He had to laugh, he remembered Murdock talking about how when they first met up with Jean again, when she found out about Amy and that Face had no interest in her, she suggested that when the reporter got back from Jakarta about the possibility of she and Murdock getting together. Well, that idea had potential too, but it was obvious now that even if Jean would let Amy get within 10 feet of Murdock and she would because she liked Amy and knew there was nothing between she and the pilot, she wouldn't hand him over easily to anyone. Oh, she wouldn't argue the point, but Hannibal knew that it would kill her now to have to give him up to someone else. But Hannibal also knew she was no martyr, she would hang up her gloves and bow out gracefully, but boy he'd hate to be shut in a room with her when that happened.

Taking a minute, he tried to think back to when he first noticed things had changed between them. Well, really nothing seemed to stick out until after Jean had dropped the bomb that she and Murdock were married. At that time, Murdock had been in bed with a 102 degree fever and in no condition to speak in his own defense on the matter. It was only after that had happened that he'd seen the two of them in bed together when it wasn't a matter of keeping Jean calm. Then, it had been because she was worried Murdock would die and wouldn't be kept from him. Of course, the part that always made it more confusing was the fact that they had been married for a whole week before they'd even announced it.

He tried thinking back further, and he remembered something else. The night before Decker had extracted that little admission from Jean. When Murdock first got sick, he'd about crashed his chopper when it really hit him. When they all met up after the landing, they didn't know what had happened, if he'd been shot, if he was hurt, what had caused him to black out. So they'd taken him into the bedroom to examine him, and as Hannibal recalled it now he had to laugh. Jean was 24 years old, and all the same he had tried to send her out of the room as they got Murdock undressed as though she was a child. That had been the beginning of the stubborn streak that reared its ugly head where Murdock was concerned, she had insisted that she wasn't leaving, and she didn't. It made sense now, it wasn't just the concern for a friend who previously had been a mere acquaintance, it was the determination of a wife to stick by her husband in sickness, but it was done without anyone knowing they were married. All the same, she hadn't been at his side but had stayed back in the doorway; probably, Hannibal thought, just trying so hard not to let on how worried she really was for his sake, so she kept herself at a distance from him though she kept her word not to leave him.

My, how far things have come, he thought to himself. Of course so much had changed over those months for all of them; but Hannibal tried considering it from Jean's position. The last couple of years had been one hell of a growing experience for her; from the army and her double life as an assassin, to her near death and her redemption, and then a year later, 3,000 miles from home to start a new life, and it just threw her back into their path, and a few weeks later she was married to one of them, and was going up against the army to help them, risking her own life, her very freedom, and doing it all without a visible care, under the justification that she had seen death and made her way back, there wasn't anything they could do to her that was worse than that. Then a couple months later, the marriage was annulled, and now here they were. What a dizzying ride, he thought to himself. And it made him grateful that so far only _one_ of his Teammates had chosen to get married, he hated to think of the whiplash he would've had if Face and/or B.A. had pulled a similar stunt at the same time.

He had to give his Captain credit though; to most people Murdock came off as being very childlike, and it was true in certain ways he was. That was part of the reason for the question was it all an act, or was he truly crazy? Personally Hannibal thought it said plenty about their society, and none of it good when some of the more harmless sides of Murdock's personality could be taken as signs of mental illness. But that said, when Jean had concocted her crazy idea of marriage, Murdock had jumped into it with both feet; this was one time where a non-mission plan wasn't a game to him, he took it very seriously and took responsibility as her husband, he had been determined to make it work. Hannibal also remembered how miserable Murdock looked in the bar when he realized that it wasn't going to work and made the decision that they should annul. He still didn't know whether to be angry at Jean for leaving that decision entirely to Murdock, or glad that she handed all control over to him to decide. She had thought she was doing him a favor, maybe they came in disguises too like blessings. Even though they'd all had their doubts about the marriage, he would admit that he was shocked when Jean told them that they were going to end it. He knew that despite Murdock saying it was the best decision for everyone that he hadn't _really_ wanted to do it; but he took it as being a part of his responsibility he had to fulfill. Married or not, there was no hiding the fact that Murdock loved this girl, for whatever reason he did, and what that reason was was still beyond all of them.

He also thought back to when Jean had pushed Decker out of the way just before his car exploded, that and whatever she had said to him in the privacy of her hospital room had bought them three days to get out town before he came looking for them. Jean would be able to leave the hospital the next day but she was still injured, but Hannibal had made it clear that they would all be moving out after they got her back home. Murdock hadn't wanted to leave, especially when his wife was hurt, but he knew he had to; and he'd been ready to go, not willingly but all the same when Hannibal said it was time to leave, he had accepted the fact and said his goodbyes to her, had even left his teddy bear with her to keep her company while they were gone. That had been Hannibal's test; he'd never had any intention to leave, but he wanted to see what Murdock would do, and the pilot hadn't let him down, he passed with flying colors and accepted the fact that they had to do what was best for the Team, no matter how hard it might be on him or her. He remembered also that look that Jean gave him after he announced that they were staying, ooh she had hated him in that instant.

_"Why didn't you tell him that before?" Jean wanted to know._

_"Oh, I have my reasons," he answered._

_Jean turned to Murdock and told him, "Just as I suspected, Decker's crazy and Hannibal's just plain weird."_

He could live with weird. Admittedly he felt like a bit of a heel for putting Murdock through that test but it was something that had to be done, he thought. In any case, Murdock had passed as Hannibal had known he would; Murdock might've intentionally botched his answers on the psychiatrists' tests, but he could pass anybody's test that he had a mind to, that was only one of the ways that Murdock was unstoppable. And it was in the past, and since then, things had gotten back to normal between all of them. He looked at his watch and realized he only had a couple hours before the day began so he decided to leave before they woke up and noticed they had a voyeur on their hands. But as he walked down towards his own room, an idea came to him.

* * *

Murdock had only been half aware of the body pressed up against him in the bed, and then it moved away from him and he fully noticed it even though he was only half awake. Instinctively he reached over and wrapped his arm around Jean's stomach and pulled her back towards him and told her, "Come on, Jean, let's stay here a while."

He didn't know what time it was but he could see the sun pouring in from the window behind him and that was all he needed to know.

Jean struggled against his hold and replied, "Come on, Murdock, it's time to get up."

"Up sure, rise but let's wait a while before we shine," he said as he flipped her over to face him, he opened his eyes wider and tried using his puppy face on her as he added, "Come on, Jean, we never sleep in, one time ain't gonna hurt."

He didn't give Jean much of a chance to protest; he raised himself up on his elbows so he hovered directly above her and kissed her.

"I had a good time last night," he told her when he pulled back and grabbed one of her hands in his, "It was fun pretending we was still married."

She smiled back at him and responded tiredly, "Yeah, it was. Funny ain't it how it got the same response out of Briggs that it did from Decker? Assuming Briggs would even still be around, what do you think he'd do if the next time we ran into him we said I was pregnant? Do you think he'd keel over or just shoot himself to avoid the rush?"

Murdock ignored her question and raised himself up on his knees and reached over the headboard and picked up his jacket. He fished around in the pocket until he found what he was looking for and pulled out his ring and held it between his fingers as he dropped back on the bed beside her.

"Now," he said as he pointed to his ring finger, "What I've never been able to figure out is on both hands there are thumbs, pinkies, fore and middle fingers, but it's only on the left hand that your ring finger's supposed to be," he pointed to the third finger on his right hand and asked, "So what's this supposed to be called?"

Jean laughed and said, "I don't know, Murdock."

"Well, I'm going to put it here anyway," he said as he slipped it onto his right hand, "You know, I wish you'd wear one of these."

"Why?"

"Because if you did, then when we went somewhere together," he grabbed her left hand in his right and said, "See? Our rings would be together, or if I wear it on my left hand, and you had yours on the right and you walk on the other side of me…"

Jean laughed and told him, "You're cute, Murdock."

"Well one of us ought to be," he jokingly replied.

Jean growled playfully and hit him with her pillow.

"Of course you're cute," he said as he dropped down and crawled next to her, "You're just not pretty."

Jean laughed and said, "That's what I like about you, Murdock, brutally honest."

He laughed and responded, "Oh you know what I mean…let's face it, Jean, there's a reason why you can pass yourself off as one of us so often."

She nodded and said, "I know, I've always seen that as more of an advantage than if I looked like someone like, say Amy for lack of a better example."

"Well as I've said, there's a big difference when you two go to the beach," he told her, "But let's face it, Jean, where looks are concerned, we could probably both do better, but would we want to?"

Jean looked him up and down and took all of him in: tall, scrawny, pale skin, a prematurely receding hairline, and the hair that remained was impossible to tame without him looking like a crazed killer.

"No," she shook her head in agreement and lay her head next to his chest, "You're the only one I've ever liked."

"Well," he replied, "You would've been in kindergarten when I found my first, but going down that list, I like you better than the rest."

Jean had a smug look on her face as she said, "But I'm sure they were all easier on the eyes."

"Oh much," Murdock nodded, "Granted it took them about three hours in front of a vanity mirror to do that…that's something I like about you, no maintenance."

"After seeing Face, I could say the same about you," Jean told him.

"And in any case, you're a lot more fun than any of those girls ever were."

"Oh yeah?" she asked.

Murdock nodded and then became somber as he explained, "See they were all before…before 'Nam, before the Team, before all of that."

"My God," Jean said, "You mean in all that time you've been at the hospital that you never…"

"Well you can understand it's a little hard to keep a regular relationship when you can't go back to your place at night because it's the mental ward of a V.A. hospital," Murdock said.

Yeah, she could understand that, "But not even the nurses or…"

Murdock shook his head, "They have a policy, they don't get involved with patients, _especially_ us crazies."

"Why?" Jean asked, "They really think those little itty bitty things would be taking advantage of little itty bitty you?"

"Ha ha," he replied, "Yeah, something like that, you know how the laws go when it comes to certifiable insanity, can't consent to _anything_."

"And _that_ is why I can't believe you waited so long to get yourself discharged," Jean told him, "All that time wasted."

"Oh I wouldn't say that," Murdock said, "Besides, in the psychiatric hospital you're allowed to be crazy because you're supposed to be crazy, so I was able to get away with plenty of stuff that I wanted to and they just had to put up with it."

"And sedate you?"

"Oh they tried, but I got too smart for them," he answered proudly, "As I told you before when you're a pilot and you're counted on to fly at a moment's notice, you've got to be straight and sober, you can't be hopped up on medication." He sensed that things were starting to get too serious and he decided on a quick diversion to lighten the mood, "Hey, did I ever tell you about the time that I Velcroed myself onto the ceiling of my room and walked around like a fly up there?"

Jean shook her head, "No."

"Oh it was great," he said as he recalled, "We had a new mission, and Face had just come to spring me, and all the nurses and orderlies are trying to get me down…"

* * *

Later that morning, Hannibal went with B.A. back to his apartment and asked him, "How's Murdock's decoder ring coming?"

All things considered, namely who it was for, B.A. seemed to be taking pride in his work as he showed it to Hannibal.

"Oh that is really nice, B.A., that almost looks like the real thing," Hannibal said, very pleased with the Sergeant's work.

"Only thing that's left is I gotta put it on the band, but how'm I supposed to know what size that fool's finger is?"

"Oh, here," Hannibal reached into his pocket and took out a silver band and gave it to B.A., "You can measure it by this."

B.A. looked at the ring and asked Hannibal, "What is this?"

"It's Murdock's," Hannibal answered, "I got it out of his jacket pocket when he wasn't looking. My guess is it's Jean's early Christmas present for him."

"Hannibal," B.A. scowled at him and held the ring up as he said, "You know what this is?"

Hannibal nodded, "Yeah I know what it is, B.A., I also know that it fits him so you can use that as a basis on how big the band for the decoder ring should be."

"Ain't the crazy fool gonna notice it's missing?" B.A. asked.

"I figure he won't if I get it back before the day's over," Hannibal told him, "Jean's got him busy for the time being and I'm hoping she can keep it that way for a while."

"Hey Hannibal," B.A. said, "You really think Decker's going to leave us alone for the rest of the month?"

"Why wouldn't he?" Hannibal asked, "Decker may be a power hungry egomaniac who trips over his own IQ but I _do_ believe he's a man of his word."

B.A. snorted and replied, "Whatever you say, Hannibal."

"What's the matter, B.A., don't you believe in miracles at Christmas?" Hannibal asked coyly.

"Get Decker off our backs until New Year's, have to be a pretty big miracle, Hannibal," B.A. reminded him.

"Well," Hannibal shrugged, "They come in all sizes, just like shoes."

B.A. grunted and said, "You and your proverbs."

"Hey listen, B.A, while I'm here," Hannibal said, "I wanted to ask you for another favor."

"Aw Hannibal, what now?" B.A. asked.

Hannibal chuckled and said, "Don't worry, B.A., I think you'll like this one."

"Somehow I doubt that very much," B.A. told him, "But what is it?"

* * *

Murdock had called Amy and asked her to come over to the house that afternoon. She did, and while Jean and Face were in the kitchen, Murdock discussed with her the plans for Christmas Eve.

"As far as I know I ought to be able to make it by 6:30," she told him, "But why don't you want Jean to know about this?"

"Oh I thought it'd be a nice surprise for her," he answered, "You know she knows that we're all going to be here, and I figure another woman around might be just the thing she needs."

Amy laughed and told him, "She needs more help than that, Murdock."

"Oh…" he waved her off.

Their attention was drawn to a scream from the kitchen and they both jumped up from the couch and went to see what was the matter.

"Jean, what's wrong?" he asked as she and Face came out of the kitchen.

"Wasn't me," she said, pointing at Face.

"What's wrong, Face?" Murdock tried again.

"A rat!" Face told him.

"What'd I do now?" Murdock asked.

Jean laughed and said, "It's not a rat, it's a little mouse."

"Where?" Amy asked.

"It crawled in through that gap under the screen door," she answered.

"Is it still in there?" Murdock asked.

"I don't know," Jean said, gesturing towards Face she added, "After hearing the woman of the house scream and run, he might've run back out."

"Very funny," Face said.

"I thought you were in the Army," Jean said, "I thought you were a damn commando."

"Nowhere did that mean I have to like rats," Face told her.

Murdock put his hands up in a self assured gesture and said, "Have no fear, Face, I'll find the little guy and put him out." He turned to Jean and said, "Now Jean, what's this mouse look like?"

"He's got dark fur and pink paws," Jean told him.

"Uh-huh," Murdock acted like he was scribbling this information down, "How big is he?"

"Uh…" Jean held her two index fingers up and a few inches apart and told Murdock, "About one mouse wide."

"One mouse wide, that's perfect," Murdock said.

"Forget the V.A.," Face told Amy, "They ought to declare _this_ place the loony bin."

Amy laughed at him and said, "Oh come on, Face, they're fun to watch."

"Sure to watch, but not to live with when they're like this," Face said, "Especially when we've got rodents running around this place! That's just great!"

"It could be worse," Amy told him, "It could be a herd of elephants."

"Shh!" he told her, "Don't give Murdock that suggestion, there's no telling what he'd do with it."

"Hey Face," Amy poked his shoulder and asked him, "Can you come back to my place? I got something for Murdock but I'm having trouble getting it wrapped."

"What is it?" he asked.

She smiled at him and said only, "You'll see."

Face went over to the kitchen and called in, "Hey Murdock, are you guys going to be alright by yourselves for a while?"

"Oh sure, Facey, I got this," Murdock replied, "I'll let you know when I get the mouse."

"That's fine," Face turned away and followed Amy to the front door.

He got in his 'Vette and followed Amy back to her apartment, and upon entering the place he could automatically see the table in the living room that was covered with things half covered in wrapping paper.

"What is all this?" he asked.

"A few things I got for the guys," she answered, then added coyly, "I already got yours wrapped and hidden."

"Very funny, Amy," Face said, "So what'd you get for Murdock?"

"I'll show you," Amy went over to the table and pulled back a sheet of green and red paper and held up a teddy bear.

"Oh it's very…cute, Amy," Face told her, "Exactly what made you think of Murdock when you saw that?"

Amy pulled her right hand back from the bear and revealed a pistol in it. Face raised his hands and felt his eyes widen as he tried to figure out the gag.

"That's why," Amy told him, "The bottom's Velcro so you can put something in it."

"You don't say," Face said as he put his hands down, "Where'd you get the gun?"

Amy blushed and said, "From the same aisle in the toy store, I was trying it on for size to see if a real one would fit."

"Held up by a cap gun," Face groaned, "My day can't get much worse than this. Boy they sure do make those things look realistic don't they?"

"What do you think, you think he'll like it?" Amy asked.

"He'll love it, believe me," Face assured her. He twisted its limbs around so Amy could wrap it up without it being obvious to anyone who felt along the paper what was inside it.

"I'll tell you, Face, I'm having a hard time finding anything for Hannibal," she said.

"That seems to be the running gag around here," Face told her, "None of us can figure out what to get him."

Amy rolled her eyes and said, "I hope somebody can come up with something. I got a couple of things for him but I don't know if he'll like them."

"Well even if he doesn't he'll have that big grin on his face and say 'oh it's great', trust me," Face said.

"So how can you tell when he actually likes something?" Amy asked.

"You can't, that's the tricky part," Face told her.

* * *

"I told you I don't like dogs," Jean told Murdock, "It's bad enough Face runs out screaming when he sees a mouse, but your dumb dog Billy goes and runs up a tree! If he does that for a mouse, what's he going to do with a cat?"

"Now don't be hard on Billy," Murdock said as he climbed down from the pecan tree in her side yard with Billy in one arm, "He can't help it."

"Yeah well we got another problem," Jean said, "While you were up there playing Tarzan, I followed the mouse out by the garage."

"And?" Murdock asked.

"The mouse just had pups," Jean told him.

"Oh!" Murdock looked like he'd just been slapped in the face.

"And before you ask," Jean shook her head, "No, we're not keeping them."

"I wasn't going to say anything," he said.

"Of course not, you'd just bring them in and make them at home and leave us to find out about them on our own," she replied.

"Aw look, Jean, I don't like vermin anymore than you do, but a new litter…I can't kill them, and I can't put poison out for them either."

"I know that," she replied, "But I don't want them in the house _or_ the garage either."

"Well it's a good thing now that this is L.A and not New York, they don't have to worry about freezing to death."

"Yeah," Jean sighed, "I'll tell you, Murdock, I just can't get used to any of this. In New York to get fresh fruit at this time of the year is practically unheard of, here it's being sold in every store, because nothing ever goes out of season here."

"Well California _is_ a nice place to live if you're a grapefruit," Murdock said, "Which reminds me, the other day when we were at the grocery store we forgot a few things."

"Oh come on, Murdock, we've already got enough food to feed the Marine Corps, what else do we need?" Jean asked.

"Well for one thing, how about a turkey for Christmas? We forgot that," he reminded her.

Jean looked like she'd been kicked in the head, "You're right."

"And you know with B.A. coming it's going to have to be a big one if all of us are going to get any of it," he added.

"Alright," Jean huffed, "Put Billy in the house and we'll go down again."

* * *

Murdock found a large frozen turkey in the bin and picked it up by the handle in its netting and tried throwing it like a bowling ball but it about took him with it so he lifted it up and grunted as he made his way over to Jean's cart and dropped it in.

"Got a hernia yet?" she joked.

"You kidding me?" he asked, "After all these years of hauling B.A. on and off of airplanes…"

"Speaking of which," Jean said, "What are you guys going to do with him? One of these days he's going to get _too_ smart for you."

"I don't know," Murdock shook his head, "I mean I tried hypnotizing him once so he wouldn't be afraid to fly."

"And how did that work?" she asked, though she had a feeling she already knew the answer.

"He didn't believe he was a chicken," Murdock said, "Instead he starts choking me until _I'm_ clucking, we had to drug him anyway."

Jean laughed and said, "Life with you is never boring."

"Yeah," Murdock agreed halfheartedly, "But I think the guys get tired of it sometimes."

"That's why you stay with me," she reminded him.

"No, that's not what I mean," he said, but he couldn't think of a way to explain it better.

"Something wrong?" Jean asked.

"I was just thinking of something," he said, "I've got an idea for something to get Hannibal and Face and the big guy for Christmas, but I'm not sure if it'll work."

"What is it?" she asked.

"I'll explain it to you on the way back, I may need your help with this," he told her.


	10. Chapter 10

Murdock shot up in bed, his eyes wide, his chest heaving and he felt a scream in his throat that hadn't had a chance to come loose. He saw the lights in the room that colored everything and he saw Jean laying next to him asleep and he knew he was awake. He huffed and puffed a few times as he tried to force himself to calm down, he felt like he'd just been ripped out of a falling dream, his feet had that pins and needles sensation when you actually hit bottom even though they hadn't been touching anything but the sheets.

The dream came back to him, and suddenly he didn't want to be here anymore. He pushed back the sheets and carefully got out of bed, stepping over the foot of the bed so he didn't wake Jean up because the only other way to really get out of the bed on his side would be climbing over her. His feet touched the carpeted floor and he walked around the bed, on the way he caught sight of something on the trunk behind the headboard. Jean could never get into her trunk because the top was always covered in books, candy bars, ammo boxes, amongst other things, and tonight there had been something new added to the menagerie; one of the china bowls from the kitchen filled with chocolate and peanut butter candies wrapped in bright red, green, silver and gold foil that had an extra shine in the multicolored lights from the window. In the back of his head he could hear that 'Silver and Gold' song from the old Rudolph cartoon, but he pushed it aside as he walked to the door, quietly left and stepped into the room next door since it was empty and he could be left in private.

When they were at the grocery store earlier that day, he'd sneaked away from Jean so she wouldn't see what he got; he'd taken a detour down to the candy section and grabbed a few bags of peanut butter cups and kisses and chocolate mints. He paid for them and stuffed them inside his jacket before returning to her. He always kept his pockets full anyway so if his jacket had a new bulge in it, it wasn't very noticeable and Jean hadn't said anything. When they'd gotten home and Jean wasn't looking, he got a bowl out of the dish rack and sneaked upstairs and poured the candy all together in it and left it on the trunk. Jean was sure to see it when she came up that night. Earlier that day, also when Jean was absent, Murdock had made a long distance call back to New York and spoken to her mother. It was still awkward having to address his unbeknownst former mother-in-law as though he was just casually living here until further notice, but they always got along whenever he had to call her up for something.

He'd stressed the fact that with this being Jean's first Christmas away from home, he wanted to make sure she had a good time and inquired about any traditions there had been at home that she hadn't told him about so he could surprise her. That had been one of the first things Mrs. Rhodes had brought up; that every year since Jean was a little girl they put out a little bowl of Christmas candy to last her until Christmas, then she woke up and found a larger bowlful in with the other goodies set out on the coffee table in the morning. That had been an easy enough surprise to pull off, and it didn't surprise Murdock that Jean would've forgotten about it. Living alone off and on and on a struggling actor's salary there were plenty of days that the mice in the yard ate better than she did. Even now, she was doing better but it was understandable how little things like that could be forgotten in her new fast paced life; and she had definitely appreciated the surprise. So what had happened? Everything had been nice when they went to bed, so what was the matter now?

And then it hit him. Jean's mother, nice woman, easy to get along with, albeit as Jean said, not too bright, (all the better for her, knowledge might be power but heavy was the head that had to store it all), but a nice woman, lovely woman, good mother…there was something about her and he couldn't put his finger on what it was, but in a way she reminded him of his own mother. Were it not for pesky moments like these, he could have a very good time at Christmas; but all major holidays took him back to that annoying little fact that he'd grown up spending most of these family-oriented pastimes without her. He'd had a long time to get used to it but it really didn't get much easier.

He felt his eyes sting and burn and it wasn't just because he was tired. It was late, everybody else was asleep, and he doubted he was going to get anyone up. He'd had a lot of experience over the years at being quiet. At the V.A. the staff expected to hear the patients crying in the night, in the daytime, going into and coming out of therapy, and surgery, etc., and why not? Between the post traumatic stress, the medications that made everybody whacked out, and the fact that most of them had been thrown away by their country, their society and their own families, those patients had a lot to cry about. But the doctors expected that, and he never did what anybody expected of them, so he never gave them the satisfaction of hearing him be one of those voices in the night. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and when they refused to stay back he smothered himself with his pillows or his blankets, the mattress, sometimes he just stopped breathing so he wouldn't make any noise, and he did it for so long he passed out and didn't wake up until the next morning when all was forgotten. He slowly sank back against the wall and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling as the light started to blur.

In the bedroom, Jean had remained asleep until she turned over and realized that the other side of the bed was empty and cold. She woke up and saw that Murdock was gone, after a minute she thought about it and realized that in itself wasn't so strange. But then she heard something. She got out of bed and followed the sound to the west wall; it was coming from the room next door. That wasn't anybody's bedroom, just a small room being used for storage since she'd accumulated more belongings than she currently had fitting space for. Putting her ear to the wall she could hear somebody breathing heavily mixed with small choking sounds, and she felt a blade in her chest when she realized it was Murdock.

* * *

Murdock looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He'd washed out his eyes with cold water but they were still red, fortunately it was only a little after 2 in the morning, come tomorrow when everybody got up he'd look normal again and he wouldn't have to explain anything to anybody. There were obvious reasons why he didn't bring problems like this up with Face, being an orphan he wouldn't be able to understand, and B.A., well Murdock knew better than to bother the big guy with his own problems. Hannibal was the only one who ever knew, and even then it was few and far between on those rare times he got to spend the night with Hannibal at his apartment before going back to the V.A. hospital the next day. The Colonel was very understanding about it, Murdock suspected it went back to something in Hannibal's own past but he never pushed the subject; for some reason the Colonel chose not to talk about his past before 'Nam and they'd all learned to accept it, or maybe it was just he who had accepted it and the others hadn't cared in the beginning anyway.

He left the bathroom and quietly made his way back down the hall to Jean's bedroom and slipped in and quietly shut the door behind him. He was surprised to see Jean wasn't in bed and he looked around, and was equally surprised to see her sitting on the floor against the opposite wall with her head hung low and her face in her hands.

"Jean," he said softly as he went over to her and knelt down beside her on the floor, "What's the matter?"

Jean lowered her hands and raised her head, Murdock couldn't hide the shock when he saw her own red eyes and wet face.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, Murdock," she said so quietly he almost couldn't hear her.

"What' you got to be sorry for?" he asked.

"I heard you," Jean told him, "But I didn't come, I didn't do anything."

He didn't get it, and in any case he hadn't been in the mood for company anyway.

"I told you before there was something wrong with me," Jean said as she straightened up, "And there sure as hell is. This only proves what I've told you all along, I'm no good, I can't…"

Whatever it was she couldn't do, she couldn't even bring herself to say what it was. Not that it mattered, Murdock had gotten very good at reading people over the years and he knew what she was trying to say. Jean _was_ a hard person to read, and she trusted very few people, and even among all of them, he wondered just how much she trusted the others. He thought back and it occurred to him that almost every time she suffered an emotional breakdown, he had been the only person present for it, the only one who _knew_, as if it was something to be ashamed of. All his years in the services, in the jungle, in the hospital had left him with too much understanding on just how much the opposite was true. For some reason, Jean had yet to learn this fact.

Earlier that day he'd joked with her about being able to pass herself off as a guy; she would've done well as one in the generation he grew up in. Jean had had it right, when they were growing up the world was still flat; in just 30 years the world had changed entirely and today people knew and understood so much more than they did when he was a kid. He remembered that idiotic attitude parents had had about boys were supposed to be tough, never weak, and crying was seen as a sign of weakness. As a child it always left him wondering just why it was supposed to be alright for girls to be weak then if that was the case. Of course, he knew better, he'd been raised by two very smart grandparents who knew far better than all those 'progressive' parents of the atomic age. Well, somehow, despite the difference of more than a decade between them, it seemed that Jean had been raised in a similar environment and taken a similar attitude to heart. Maybe she hadn't been raised with it but she'd picked it up somewhere along the way and had applied it to herself.

On one hand it was understandable given her past. Six months hidden in plain sight, six months as a self employed assassin; she'd been too hopped up on raw rage to feel much else and in her mind frame to suddenly get emotional about anything would've been to show her weakness and become incompetent to serve the job at hand. That was part of why he remembered so well shortly after they'd met her, that night in the hotel when he'd woken up and found her crying in the bathroom. He'd never gotten any answers out of her then what was the matter, but they'd found out the next day when they found her journal recording a nightmare involving the four of them captured and facing an execution only to opt for taking their own lives first. Sure, the reason she looked white as an old nightgown was pure fear from the nightmare, but there had been something else in that look on her face that wasn't just the feeling of being petrified; embarrassment, humiliation at being discovered. It went further than that though; if he had to guess he would wager that that other thing he'd seen in her face then that he hadn't been able to get a reading on, was another breed of fear: fear at the reprimand she faced for being weak and letting it show. He couldn't figure it out, he couldn't figure out how a girl who'd been brought up by two normal parents with sound heads on their shoulders, could turn out like she had; something had happened, something had gone wrong somewhere to warp her into what she had become, but what, and who had been responsible? That was something he knew they would never have the answer to, even if Jean knew and was willing to acknowledge it, she'd never tell them, he knew that.

And tonight? Well tonight had exposed the other end of that double edged sword. For her to get emotional was a sign of weakness, but for someone else, that was a sign that something was wrong and they needed help. But she hadn't been able to be of any help to him when it seemed he needed it; which made sense, she didn't know how to be emotional herself without thinking there was something wrong with her for it, so it was understandable she wouldn't know how to try and comfort someone else who was. Thinking back again, he went down the list; the real clincher had come after Jean had been shot, when Brutus left her, that was the most emotionally exhausting experience of her life, and at the time she was so far out of it to even notice someone else was in the room, but after the fact she knew that he had been there with her.

The next one that came to mind was when the five of them and Decker and Crane had trapped some drug runners in a cemetery. One car had lost control and flipped over, and then exploded, four men died instantly in the flames, the money and drugs they'd been transporting blew out the windows and rose up into the billowing clouds of smoke and fire. She had been alright in the cemetery and during the ride out of there, then they'd realized she was turning purple from not breathing. And why? Very simple, if she wasn't breathing then she couldn't make those pesky sounds that drew everybody's attention to the fact that you were near that point of bawling your guts out. If she'd had it her way she would've been content to turn purple and pass out, except they'd noticed the resemblance she was bearing to a grape and they did the only thing they knew to; they had to force the breath back into her body so Face had hit her hard between her shoulder blades, making her scream, and once she inhaled again she collapsed in Murdock's arms with hysteria. Of course she hadn't been the lone wolf on that one; he seemed to recall there hadn't been a dry eye in that entire house until Decker got home several hours later. Brushes with death of those sorts were always capable of ripping your guts out and whether it was grief for those who had died or a wakeup call of the close call of your own mortality, left you bawling like a baby. That was something he already knew too well from serving in a war, when you were surrounded by death you were expected to become numb to it, but most couldn't and that was why they came back with post trauma; those who could become as unaffected by it as was possible didn't deal with trauma because they didn't feel anything anymore, and that was worse.

Jean must've been able to get some idea of what was going through his mind because she looked up at him and said, in something closer to her usual nonchalant tone, "Maybe I'm just a sociopath."

He laughed and said as he gathered her in his arms and lifted her up onto his lap, "No sweetheart, you're not one of those, believe me I know."

"Well then it's something else," she said, "Something's wrong with me." She laughed bitterly and said, "Some wife I was, I can't even make sure you're alright."

Murdock made sure she was looking at him as he told her, "But I am…there wasn't anything you could've done anyway, don't worry about it, darling." And as if to emphasize his words, he leaned over and kissed her.

Jean turned her head and looked at him mournfully and said, "I'm sorry, Murdock, I do love you, I know I've got a horrible way of showing it though."

Murdock smiled and pulled her tighter against him and said, "I know you do, darling, I've always known that, and you have a far easier time of showing it than B.A. does, now if I can see through his act every time he claims I'm not his friend, don't you think I can see through yours? At least you'll admit that you love me."

Jean put her arms high up around his back and hugged him like she was holding on for her life; he hooked one arm around her in return and rubbed her back with his free hand. After a few minutes he felt her relax against him and felt her head drop on his shoulder and he knew she'd be asleep soon. He patted her on the back and moved to get up, pulling her to her feet. "Come on," he said as he put his hands on her shoulders and led her towards the door, "Let's go get you cleaned up."

In the bathroom he ran a washcloth under the cold water and dabbed at her face and around her eyes. Jean brought her hand up to stop him but it was obvious she was too out of it to actually try.

"You know I was only teasing you earlier, don't you?" Murdock asked as he re-wet the cloth and ran it over her cheek again, "I think you're very pretty."

Jean's face scrunched up like she was going to start crying again, instead she got out a small laugh and said, "Yeah, sure…" with no conviction in her voice.

"Sure, you're not that easy on the eyes, I'll give you that," he said, "But really it's all in how you carry yourself, if you have a," he chuckled, "Well rounded personality, or several, that shines forth, and if you're sure of yourself, and you definitely are. When all those things come together," he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face the mirror, "Then the finished product is pretty amazing."

"Don't tell me," she said cynically as she tilted her head back to look up at him, "That's why you fell in love with me."

"I fell in love with you because I've never seen anyone like you before in my life," he stroked through the hair on the back of her head as he looked down at her, "You've got enough of your own _charming_ personality to make all of Face's girlfriends look like wallpaper."

"I've got news for you, Murdock," Jean told him, "It doesn't take much to do that. Anybody can come up with a dumb blonde but Face is the only guy I know who can get dumb blondes, brunettes _and_ redheads."

Murdock chuckled and said, "Jean, that's not nice."

"I know, that's my brilliant personality shining through that you love so much," she replied.

"Yes it is," he kissed her and said, "Come on, let's go back to bed."

They went back into the bedroom, Murdock closed the door behind them, then he stopped right by the bed, picked two candies up out of the bowl and gave one to Jean and unwrapped his own.

"Thanks, Murdock," Jean whispered.

He hugged her and kissed the top of her head and replied, "You're welcome, hon, anytime you need me you know where I am."

* * *

Hannibal gave up on trying to sleep and picked up the clock on the nightstand and saw it was 2:30 in the morning, and he still couldn't sleep. At first he hadn't been sure why that was, but after he lay in bed for a while he realized it was because he could hear somebody talking down the hall. Probably Murdock, he decided and turned over, but time went on and it hadn't stopped. He tried covering his head with the pillows but the sound still got through, so finally Hannibal decided to go see what the commotion was about. He knew that Murdock was on occasion given to fits of insomnia and would stay up all night talking or watching TV, but this was getting ridiculous, it was late and he wanted to sleep.

The door was closed to the bedroom and Hannibal decided to listen to what was being said before he went charging in. Now that he had his ear to the door he could hear the pilot a lot more coherently, and he was glad he decided to hold off on entering the room unannounced. It sounded like Murdock was telling Jean a story, and most likely she was already dead to the world and he was just telling it for something to do until he fell asleep too.

"_And let's see,"_ he heard the pilot say _"The reindeer's names were Racer, Pacer, Fearless, Peerless, Ready, Steady, Feckless, Speckless, and Flossie and Glossie. So how they went from that to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen is beyond me."_

Hannibal almost laughed, and he did a double take when he thought he'd heard a sound escape his throat. But Murdock hadn't heard him. Now there was something he hadn't heard in a long time. Murdock must've been telling that story from memory, but Hannibal knew those names anywhere; that was L. Frank Baum's story of Santa Claus, his mother had read that book to him every year when he was a kid, and it had already been an old story when he was born, nevertheless a good one.

Quietly, he backed away from the door and went down the hall back to his own room. Knowing what Murdock's antics were was always better than not knowing, and that in itself could let him sleep more often than not, when he didn't have to wonder what the Captain was up to. Oh, it wasn't that he was worried that Murdock would do something actually psychotic, unless threatened Murdock was harmless; but his pranks and incidents could get tiresome and sometimes downright annoying. Of course he was sure he had the same effect on his men from time to time, they all certainly complained about his antics enough that it seemed so anyway.

In the dark confines of his room, left to his own thoughts and memories, he recalled several times when Murdock would be on leave from the V.A. and staying with him for the night; and he remembered how many times they resulted in Murdock waking up in the night screaming. He never went into details about the nightmares but they all went back to the V.A. It didn't make any sense, but Hannibal counted his blessings that _one_ of them could come back from Vietnam without being plagued by nightmares of _that_ every night; but somehow the effect that the V.A. was having on him seemed to be worse. The trouble was Murdock was a very secretive person and even though he was usually very open with them, there was never any telling just when he was telling the truth, and when he was holding something back, and when he avoided something altogether, it was all anybody's guess. So maybe more had happened back there than he was aware of, than any of them would ever know about, he didn't know.

In the back of his mind there was a nagging little voice that sounded suspiciously like Jean; throwing around accusations of leaving Murdock in the hospital to rot. He remembered she _had_ said that to him, right after she'd helped Face sneak him back in when Decker came to pay a surprise visit. Ooh she had been _furious_ when she found out they weren't going to go back and get him for several days. And he also thought back and remembered that it was around that time that she had broken _in_to the V.A. to see him, and it was the morning after that that they got the ball rolling on his release. The nurse on wakeup call duty had found them in bed together and got the whole hospital in an uproar about it, leaving Jean to come up with a story about being Murdock's girlfriend and the rest had been history. Obviously if that kid thought something wasn't being looked into or dealt with quickly enough, she'd come up with her own plan to fix that.

In the beginning she had been most venomous towards him but every time he knew they weren't seeing a fraction of her real potential of what she could do when pushed, and he knew he didn't want to get on her nasty side; obviously any woman who could kill 20 men including Navy SEALs, wasn't anyone to try messing with. And he was smart, he was quick, he knew every move, he was always the man with a plan, but during that 6 month period that she lived and worked and existed as an assassin, she had taken it upon herself to rewrite the rules, and he was so thankful that she had been willing to cooperate with them and work with them rather than trying to take them on as well. He liked to think of them all as invincible, that the good guys always won and could never be stopped, or killed, but he knew the truth was they were damn lucky; every job they took they were putting their necks on the line, all it would take would be one lucky shot, one carefully aimed bullet, and it could be over for any one of them. That was something he preferred _not_ thinking about, but with all of them taking their share of lead over the years, it was something that he'd _had_ to think about more than once and consider all the what if's and what could be's. And of course, he remembered, that Jean had been in that exact boat as well; two shots to the chest, eight hours in surgery, she knew the score just as well as the rest of them.

The more Hannibal thought about it, _that_ above everything else was why their being married _had_ worked. Murdock could insist all he wanted that something hadn't been right, something wasn't working out, but Hannibal knew better; for the brief time those two had been married it had worked _very_ well for them, and he knew it worked, most of all because Jean _got_ it, she _knew_ how the Team worked and how things went where they were involved. He had to admit if one of his men had to get involved with a woman he was glad that it was someone like Jean who knew how it worked, who knew the risks and accepted them, and even took them on herself.

The father figure in him wanted so much to yell at her until he busted her down to a gnat for all the stupid risks she took in trying to help them; but he knew it wouldn't do any good because for one he wasn't her father, and for another he knew she'd never listen to him anyway. Even if other women they had encountered over the years would have entertained a notion of being a shred as crazy as Jean had proved to be, he knew that it wouldn't take much from any of them to bring it to a quick end. While it was true they didn't make a general rule of hitting women and in fact avoided it whenever possible, they were still able to intimidate any uncooperative people into suddenly becoming very compliant. Usually one look at B.A. was enough to scare anybody into cooperating with them, but Jean had proven she was too smart for that since the beginning when she called him on it; had egged him on to hit her, and even when he had, accidentally of course, she still didn't back off.

Apparently somebody else had beaten all sense out of her a long time ago because she hadn't had any left by the time they found her. That was the downside to having someone around who wasn't part of the Team, when he spoke his men listened to him, but because Jean belonged to nothing and owed her allegiance to nobody, she also answered to nobody but herself; a habit that wouldn't die until she did, and he knew it. Too much time spent on her own without anybody to help or anyone to rely on; maybe it wasn't too late for that to change in her but even if it did, it would take a long time and he knew that too. In the meantime he knew he would just have to accept her as she was, just as she had to accept all of them for what they were. Well, there were certainly worse ways to live, he thought to himself.

* * *

The next day, Hannibal and B.A. had gone back to their own apartments, but Murdock twisted Face's arm into staying around for the day to help them cook. He'd insisted that they needed to try a crash course in the recipes Jean's mother had sent her for Christmas, because if they weren't going to be any good it was important to find out now before the party. Face hadn't been too eager, but he'd managed to get Amy to come over and help and with the four of them working it took a lot less time than originally planned, but by the time it was over, Face dropped on the couch from exhaustion and didn't want to move.

"Man!" he said, "Those old time candy makers must've had arms like Gorgeous George before the industrial mixers were made. I never knew it took that much work to make chocolate fudge."

"That's _why_ the stuff sells for six dollars a pound," Jean told him as she sat down beside him, and Murdock beside her, and Amy on the other side next to Face, "That's why nobody ever makes it either."

"It sure is good though," Murdock said.

"I should hope so, Murdock," Amy told him, "You ate six pieces of it."

"I had to make sure it was good," he insisted.

"Murdock," Jean held her fingers up as she explained, "One is testing, six is the whole dessert platter."

"Well it's still good," he said, "Though a word of warning, hide those gingerbread cookies, next time B.A. comes over you'll find them all with their heads bitten off…and I want to do that. Say…" he picked his head up and looked at Amy and asked, "I wonder _why_ they call it gingerbread, you hardly put any of it into the dough."

"I'll tell you why," Jean answered, "Because nobody has ever been hungry enough to knowingly eat molasses men."

"Hey," Murdock poked her, "What about that fruitcake? When're you going to make that?"

"Oh Murdock that has to wait until tomorrow, the fruit has to soak overnight or else it's going to be hard as a brick," Jean said, and added quickly, "Shut up, Face."

Amy giggled as she watched him snap his mouth shut.

"Well come on, Jean, there's a reason all those jokes about fruitcake exist," he said.

"Sure, but this is a different recipe," she told him, "No nuts, no rum, no brandy, no spices, and no raisins."

"Why not raisins?" Murdock asked.

"I don't like them," she answered, "All that's left is the fruit and the orange juice they soak in, it's a good recipe."

"A good fruitcake, now there's an oxymoron," Face said.

"Well I don't know about that," Jean said as she reached over and grabbed Murdock's T-shirt and balled it up in her hand to pull him over to her.

"Well," Amy said, "I definitely think there'll be plenty of dessert for the party, but what about the main course?"

"Oh that's just going to be a bunch of appetizers and finger food," Jean said, "You know, finger sandwiches, Vienna sausages, cocktail pickles…"

"I've got a few ideas for the menu," Murdock said.

"Don't tell me we're going to have to go to the store _again_," Jean groaned.

"Well that depends," he said, "Do we have any canned crab or jalapeno peppers here?"

"No," Jean told him, "I'll get it tomorrow, after three hours in that kitchen I don't want to do anything but just stay here and rest."

"Sounds good to me too," Face lulled as he put his feet up on the coffee table and closed his eyes.

Murdock and Jean watched and waited until Face and Amy had both tilted their heads back and fallen asleep, then they got off of the couch and quietly headed out the front door. Murdock still wanted to get some Christmas shopping done and they decided to get out of the house and get it taken care of before anybody could come up with any other ideas of anything they needed to do first. Murdock was still trying to come up with something to get for Hannibal, and along the way to that he found some things to get for the others as well.

"Hey Murdock, it's too bad Amy's not currently seeing anybody," Jean said as they made a detour through the women's lingerie department, "Just imagine giving her a present and saying it's to keep her boyfriend warm on the cold nights," and she picked up a black see-through nightgown.

Murdock decided to test just how see-through it was and put his hand up the bottom of it, and he whistled when he saw how much of it showed through.

"That gift will keep _any_ man warm at _any_ time of the year," he told her.

Jean laughed and put it back on the rack and they got out of there, each feeling like they'd caught some germ just from being in the department. En route to another section of the department store, they passed by the toy department and Murdock stopped in his tracks and his jaw dropped and he squealed like a pig.

"What is it?" Jean asked.

"Do you see what I see?" he asked.

Clearly not. "What?"

He grabbed her by the arm and jerked her along, Jean had to be fast because he about dislocated her shoulder entirely. They were in an aisle full of large and miniature toy cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc. But the one Murdock had set his sights on, and ran over to the shelf to pick one up, was a large black van that was roughly the size of a toolbox.

"So what?" Jean didn't get it.

Murdock went over to the next shelf and picked up paint kits being sold for the little model cars and picked up one container of gray paint and one of bright red paint.

"I get it now," Jean said, "You're gonna paint it to look like B.A.'s van."

"Yeah, he'll love it," Murdock said.

"Him?" Jean repeated, "You mean you're actually gonna give it to B.A.?"

"Well naturally," he told her.

"Well," she shrugged, "It's definitely something he doesn't already have."

"Yeah," Murdock agreed, then he became more solemn and said, "But I still wish I knew what to get for Hannibal."

"Yeah, you'd think he'd be an easier person to shop for than the mudsucker," Jean said, then an idea hit her and she asked him, "Hey Murdock, I want your honest answer on this...do you really want to be married again?"

"Well of course," he answered, "I'd marry you again in a heartbeat."

"Right," she said, "And you want kids?"

"Sure I want kids," he told her, "I want a lot of them."

"Alright," Jean said, "Then I think I know what we can get him, it'll be more like a placeholder for a future present."

"What's that?" he asked.

Once Murdock got the van and paint paid for, Jean had him follow her into the store next door which was a smoke shop, and they came back out with a box full of blue and pink labeled 'It's a Boy/Girl' cigars.

"He can smoke them now and keep the sentiment in mind for later on," Jean explained.

"I guess Face was right," Murdock said, "He said to get Hannibal more cigars because it's something he always needs…we just had to get the _right_ ones."

"There you go," she agreed.


	11. Chapter 11

They were alone at Jean's house that night; Face, B.A. and Hannibal had all gone back to their own places, and that was fine with them. It gave Murdock a perfect chance to start painting the van for B.A. and he was able to do it in the wide open space of the living room without having to worry about anyone walking in on him. He got it half finished that night and when he was done, they lay against each other on the couch and looked at the Christmas tree in the dark room, the colored lights the only illumination and how they made everything else sparkle and shine.

"Now this is the life," Murdock said, "This is exactly what I've been waiting for all these years. You know, at the V.A. we get in a fake tree and they let the patients all help decorate it, but of course nothing's glass or breakable, and nothing with those metal hangers on them and nothing edible, so it doesn't leave a whole lot to pick from, mainly just gum wrappers and bandages and stuff like that, and then there would always be one guy who tried climbing the tree because he wanted to be the angel on top."

Jean laughed and said, "Seems fitting, considering it's a crazy hospital."

"Yeah, but they were a nice bunch of guys," Murdock told her, "But I like this better."

"So do I," she agreed.

They fell asleep together on the couch, and the next morning after breakfast, Hannibal and Face came to drop in on them. Much to Face's dismay, they were just in time to be the guinea pigs for the fruitcake Jean had baked.

Hannibal just shrugged and said, "Why not? My mother made fruitcake for Christmas, it was good."

Murdock sawed two pieces off of the cake loaf and gave them to the Colonel and the Lieutenant and waited to see what they did. Hannibal bit into his with full force, Face just nibbled a corner piece off, then to make sure he wasn't missing something, he took another bite and he said, to his surprise, "It's actually good."

"I told you," Jean said.

Apparently Hannibal didn't share the sentiment, he looked down at it and said, "Tastes like pound cake…what, no rum?"

"Not in this recipe, that's why it's so light," Jean told him.

Hannibal picked up the cake in the pan and murmured something to Face about filling a little syringe with enough rum to give it that extra flavor and injecting it during the party.

"That's a good idea, we ought to try that with the punch too," Murdock murmured to Jean.

"Oh be quiet," Jean told him.

Hannibal laughed as they engaged in a minor banter, now they were starting to act like a couple who had been married. Face noticed it too but he wasn't as amused by it as Hannibal was, and when they left later that morning he asked the Colonel, "You don't think that if Jean ever lost her temper with Murdock that she'd hit him, do you?"

Hannibal looked at him like he'd lost his mind and said, "Jean? I doubt that very much, Face, out of the four of us she likes him the most, obviously."

"I know," he replied, "I was just wondering…I'm wondering if maybe it's getting time that he moved back in with one of us again."

Hannibal didn't seem to be concerned and he told Face why, "Murdock doesn't seem to have any problem staying on with her for the time being. If he says something then we'll figure out what to do, but I can't see Jean turning on her own husband."

"_Ex_-husband," Face reminded him, "And you know how _those_ relationships always work out."

"Well that might be," Hannibal conceded, "But Murdock is an adult, he can take care of himself, especially against a woman."

Face laughed dryly and remarked, "Are you forgetting who we're talking about, Hannibal?"

He stopped and looked at Face and asked, "You really think she'd do something to him?"

"I don't know," Face said, "It seems to me that she's short with him today, I don't think I've ever seen her act like that."

Hannibal shrugged and said, "Everybody's entitled to have a bad day now and then. We'll check in with him later to see if everything's going alright."

* * *

"B.A., you've really outdone yourself this time," Hannibal told the Sergeant when he went to see him that afternoon, "Murdock's going to love this ring."

"Yeah I guess so," B.A. reluctantly agreed, "Just so long as the crazy fool don't try kissing me when he gets it, if he does I'm gonna bust his jaw."

Hannibal chuckled and asked him, "Incidentally how's that _other_ project coming?"

"That's going to take longer to get done," B.A. said, "By the way, did you get that fool his other ring back?"

"Yeah," Hannibal answered, "He never noticed it was missing."

"Hey Hannibal," B.A. told him, "I'm gonna have to work on this thing straight through for the next couple a' hours before I get to a stopping off place, otherwise it ain't gonna come out right."

Hannibal looked at his watch and said, "I better call Murdock then and tell him we won't be making it for dinner tonight."

"Just as well," B.A. said, "Long as I don't have to eat anything that crazy fool made, it's fine with me. He can't do anything right, Hannibal: he can't cook, he can't swim, he can't drive…only thing he _can_ do right is fly, and that's terrible enough."

The phone rang before Hannibal could pick it up, he answered and was surprised to see that Murdock had beaten him to the punch.

"Hey Murdock, what's up?"

"Colonel…can we reschedule that dinner for another night?"

"That's what I was just getting ready to call you about," Hannibal told him, "We can't make it tonight." He noticed something sounded off in the pilot's tone and he asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Well tonight's not good anyway," Murdock answered, "Jean ain't feeling too well today."

"Sorry to hear that, what's wrong?" Hannibal asked.

"She's sick with a bad headache and had to go to bed," Murdock said, "She's had it most of the day and it just got worse, nothing worked for it, and I think at this rate she'll sleep half the night."

"Hmmm," Hannibal thought and said, "Maybe she's one of those human barometers."

"Huh?"

"I was just hearing on the weather forecast they're expecting us to get hit by a heavy storm tonight," Hannibal said, "What'll probably happen is the minute the downpour starts _then_ it'll go away."

"I don't know," Murdock said, "But I think it'd be better if the house was quiet tonight."

"Sure, Murdock, I understand," Hannibal told him, "We'll see you guys tomorrow."

"What's up, Hannibal?" B.A. asked as the Colonel hung up the phone.

"Jean's sick and the dinner's canceled anyway," Hannibal answered, then he picked the receiver up again and said, "I better call Face and give him the message. I think he said he was going to see Amy about something this afternoon."

* * *

Face hung up with Hannibal and went over to the couch and plopped down on it next to Amy who was flipping through a magazine.

"What was that about?" she asked.

"That was Hannibal, Murdock called him, Jean's sick so dinner's off," he answered.

"Too bad," Amy said, "I was looking forward to trying Murdock's…" she giggled, "What is it, deep fried socks or something?"

"Probably," Face agreed.

"Hey Face," Amy grinned slyly at him, "I want to get your opinion on something," she turned the page she was looking at towards him so he could see it wasn't a magazine but a woman's lingerie catalogue. "What do you think?"

"That depends, who's going to wear it?" he asked as he saw the item she'd flipped to, a see-through nightie.

Amy couldn't keep back her laughter as she said, "I just had an idea for a gag gift, what do you think would happen if I got this for Jean and told her it's something to keep Murdock warm at night?"

"The gag would be on you, Amy, Murdock's just crazy enough to wear it," Face told her.

Amy threw her head back laughing.

"Besides, why would you get something like that for Jean?" Face asked.

"Well I was just thinking if those two _do_ get married again," Jean said, "It could be something to wear on their honeymoon."

Face cringed at the thought of that.

"What?" Amy asked.

"You don't know Jean very well," he told her, "The woman doesn't even own a single dress, there's no way in hell she'd ever wear one of _those_. Just as well, I don't need that mental image burned into my brain."

Amy laughed at him and said, "You are really impossible, Face, you know that?"

"I believe I've been told a time or two," he replied.

Amy made a buzzer sound like he just gave the wrong answer on a game show and said, "Liar, try thousands."

"Not thousands," he told her.

"Not twice," she responded.

Face fought back a laugh and said, "You know Jean was right the first time, before Murdock got stuck with her she said when you got back to town Murdock ought to try his luck with you, I think you two would be perfect together."

"You're only saying that," Amy told him, "Because you know you'll never have me."

"Yeah, so much the better for the next poor jerk," Face teasingly remarked.

Amy picked up one of the pillows on the couch with her free hand and hit him in the head with it.

* * *

After Murdock had gotten off the phone with Hannibal, he decided to go upstairs and check on Jean to see if she was still awake and needed anything. She'd complained of a headache shortly after Hannibal and Face had left that morning, she'd taken a couple of pills and figured that would be the end of it. But as the hours passed it only got worse, and between the two of them they tried everything they could think of that should've helped ease the pain. Maybe it was dehydration, so she drank two glasses of water, maybe her head was telling her she was hungry instead of her stomach, so she ate again, maybe she needed more pills, but also Murdock told her that caffeine helped the body break down the painkillers and take effect quicker, so she ate two chocolate bars to go along with it, and nothing.

It got to a point she had a splitting pain running down the middle of her scalp and all across the back of her skull. By the time she had dropped on the floor and was crying in pain, begging Murdock to shoot her to put her out of her misery, he knew that this was no normal headache. He was reluctant to take her to a doctor and he knew she was just as reluctant to go, so they would hold off on that unless she seemed to get worse. Finally he suggested that she just go to bed and sleep it off, if that didn't help then nothing would and he _would_ take her to the hospital. That had been the last he'd heard of her for a while.

It was quiet upstairs, almost _too_ quiet. Murdock crept along to the bedroom and peered in, and was mildly taken aback by what he saw. As a last resort before going to bed for the afternoon, Jean had thought a hot shower might help relieve some of the pain throbbing in her skull. She lay on top of the bed asleep wrapped in only a towel, her hair still in damp spikes, and though she was asleep, every few breaths he could hear a low moan or whimper escape from her lips. The blinds had been closed to keep the sunlight out, though there hadn't been much sun that day and it was already pretty dark in the room. Murdock went over to the bed and very carefully pulled the covers out from under her and got her tucked in without waking her up. He picked up one of the teddy bears from the foot of the bed and placed it loosely in her arm. He wanted to kiss her but didn't dare for all the pain she was in, and right now the only thing that could possibly help her was to sleep. He watched her for a few minutes and then turned and left the room, he'd be back to check on her later.

By the time Jean finally woke up, it was night and the whole room was dark. She panicked initially, trying to figure out what was going on and how long she'd been asleep.

"Good evening," she heard Murdock close by. Even in the dark she was able to make out his silhouette and she sat up on the bed and reached out for him.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"It's 7 o' clock," he answered, "You slept all afternoon. How's your head?"

"My head?" it took her a minute to realize the reason why she'd gone to sleep in the first place, "It's fine now."

"I thought so," Murdock said, "Hannibal said once the rain started that it'd go away."

"Rain?" Jean listened and realized that outside rain was beating down and pounding against the siding of the house.

"It started about half an hour ago," he explained, "But it hasn't really poured until about 10 minutes ago." Murdock put his arms around her because he sensed she was still disoriented and he asked her, "Hannibal was right, wasn't he? It was because of the rain."

Jean nodded, "Every time there's a major change in the weather I get migraines, _especially_ when it rains."

"Well it certainly came at the right time this time," Murdock told her, "You know all week long it's been sunny and warm, well they're saying we're gonna get a cold snap from this, should go down to about 40 degrees tonight."

"That would give _anybody_ a headache," Jean agreed. She pulled away from Murdock and said, "I can't believe I slept all day, I _hate_ this."

"Migraines?" Murdock asked.

"Losing time," Jean answered, "Every time this happens I wind up sleeping half the day and night, all that time lost, because of these _stupid_ headaches."

A chill ran through her body and Murdock could hear her chattering, and he remembered that she didn't have anything on.

"Murdock," Jean said hesitantly, "Why aren't the lights on?"

"Oh…" he was glad for the dark so she couldn't see him blush as he said, "Just a little wishful thinking on my part."

"Huh?"

He laughed nervously and explained, "I was just thinking about if we were still married by this time…"

Jean could almost hear the sheepish grin on his face as he trailed off and she said, "Don't tell me, let me guess," she felt along in the dark until she could feel him and she said, "You've been juggling eggs again."

He laughed and peeled her hand off his stomach and said, "Not quite, though that does remind me…that night you came to see me at the V.A., wound up staying the night."

"And on your bed that was no easy task," Jean replied.

He smiled as he recalled, "The next morning when the nurse came in and found us, and the whole ward was in an uproar."

"For as much trouble as we got in you'd think we actually did something," Jean smirked as she recollected the events of that morning.

"Yeah," Murdock came up behind her and put his arms around her waist, "I keep trying to remember, I don't _think_ anything happened, did it?"

"If it did, I wasn't there," she told him, "It seems to me that somehow we always have a good time doing absolutely _nothing_."

"Well, not entirely," Murdock said as he leaned down to kiss her.

"Have the others been here?" Jean thought to ask him.

"No, I called them and they're going to come over another night instead," he answered, "Hey, you ready for dinner?"

"I'm really not hungry, Murdock," she said.

"Oh you will be," he told her as he stepped away from her and went around the room to plug in the window lights, "I've got a surprise for you."

"This ought to be good," Jean rolled her eyes, "I better get dressed first."

"Just put your pajamas on, it's not a formal dinner," Murdock told her.

"I hate wearing them," she replied, "I can't be comfortable lounging around in those all day, it just reminds me of all the times I was sick as a kid and stuck in bed."

Murdock turned back to her and inquired, "You were sick a lot?"

"All the time, they tried vaccinating me and that just made it worse, so after the first couple tries they just gave up on that," Jean said, "My mother always said I'd outgrow it, but when you've got the flu 3 times a year for 10 years in a row, you stop believing it long before then. Of course _then_ we found out the winter attack was due to my allergies, that's why they had to wash down the tree. And the kick in the head about that one...you remember she told you about the bowl of candy every year? The joke is I was always too sick to eat any of it until New Year because they said we couldn't chance anything upsetting my stomach again. You see I'm weird like that. And that's also why I never could've lasted in the army, I would've died from the inoculations alone, I managed to slip around that when I enlisted without anybody knowing, but that only worked because I wasn't going to stay anyway."

She tried to explain what she was originally getting at and said, "You see, Murdock, I'm the kind of person that…I've always got to be ready incase something happens, you know? Ready to go at a moment's notice," she laughed and said, "As a kid I always slept in my clothes incase something would happen and I'd have to leave the house in the middle of the night in a hurry…I'm comfortable in my jeans and my shoes, take them away and…that's why I don't like being in the hospital, even if your clothes aren't ruined they take them away and stick you in a paper gown, who the hell can be comfortable in that? It's not about our comfort or our convenience, it's a power move, they take away our clothes, and with it they start to strip away our identity and our freedom, otherwise if nothing else they'd let us wear scrubs like the orderlies, at least then we'd look semi-normal when we tried escaping."

There was no worse feeling in the world than having a crazy person stare at you as if he didn't have the slightest idea what you were talking about.

"They never made you do that in the V.A., did they?"

"Well it's a bit of a preferential thing," he explained, "If you can dress yourself then you're encouraged to wear your regular clothes, if they have to dress you then it's easier just to leave them in their pajamas."

"Yeah, easier," Jean said, "No zippers, few buttons, just pull them on and off, up and down, like a set of oversized swim trunks, not me, if somebody's going to be taking my pants off without my permission they're going to have to do it the hard way."

And now something else was starting to make sense and he said, "That's why you don't wear dresses either."

"Well let's face it, they're not practical for anything," Jean said, "You can't straddle and climb anything in them, your legs have no protection against anything, and one big gust and you'll certainly be a sight to see. And then you add the fact that they're not even comfortable to boot, every one I ever _did_ wear as a kid had to have been all made from the same itchy, choking material. Why anybody _would_ wear them is beyond me."

Murdock laughed a little as he remembered putting on Jacqueline Taylor's wedding dress and his struggle to make a clean getaway in it after leaving Cutter at the altar. "You have a point they're not very practical, especially those long ones you always trip over them."

Okay, so he was willing to concede she had a point. All the same he could tell that despite sleeping for five hours she was still tired and would probably fall asleep before too long in the night. He went over to the dresser and said, "How about a compromise?" he picked up one of his pajama shirts with Mighty Mouse on it and said, "You wear yours if I wear mine?" If they were both dressed for bed then she could hardly see that as being anything related to a power move.

Slowly, Jean reluctantly nodded in agreement.

"Good," he said as he picked his up and headed for the door, "I'll leave you alone to get dressed, yell if you need anything."

He changed out in the hall, since the weather had predicted a cold snap he'd put on one of his warm sets of pajamas with long sleeves and full length pants, and a minute later when Jean came out he saw she was dressed the same way in long dark and light blue pajamas.

"This still feels weird," she told him.

"Well just try to relax," he said as they went downstairs, "We're alone tonight, nobody's coming over, we've got nothing we have to do, so we _can_ just lounge around and be lazy tonight."

They entered the living room and Murdock pushed Jean onto the couch and told her, "Stay here, I'll be back in a minute with our dinner."

_Our_?

"You haven't eaten either?" she asked.

"No, I figured you'd be getting up soon," he told her, "Now no peeking."

She was almost afraid to ask. Murdock disappeared into the kitchen and she could hear him clattering around in there, and then heard the sizzle of something cooking in the frying pan but she couldn't pick up on the scent. A couple minutes later, he reentered the room carrying a tray with two glasses of milk and two sandwiches that looked like grilled cheese, but didn't smell like it.

"What's that, Murdock?" she asked.

"Grilled peanut butter and pickle sandwiches," he answered.

Jean laughed and said, "You're good."

"I knew you liked them cold so I figured we'd try them like this," Murdock said as he put the tray down beside her, "I knew that'd get your appetite back."

"Oh yeah, how?" she asked as she picked one up and bit into it.

"Same way I knew it would work when you slept for two days in that hotel room, we finally coaxed you awake, with a cheeseburger."

Jean laughed at his comment.

"It's true," he told her, "I knew that would work, nothing will get the salivating juices flowing more than that smell of hot greasy meat with cheese and ketchup, but it's the pickles that are the clencher. There is just something about that aroma of those brine and vinegar soaked cucumbers that slams the olfactory senses awake and sends a red hot bulletin up to the brain that screams WAKE UP, LUNCH!"

Jean laughed and said, "It's really good, thanks. Hey, did you finish getting B.A.'s van painted yet?"

"Yep, sure did," Murdock went over to the corner of the room and picked up the toy van and showed her, "Looks just like the real thing."

"It sure does," she agreed, "He's gonna love that, Murdock."

"Yeah and I figure it'll get plenty of use because he can let the kids at his daycare center play with it," Murdock said as he put it back in its hiding place.

"Okay now explain this to me again," Jean said, "These kids he deals with are about 10 years old, how the hell can you call that a daycare center?"

"Because nobody there works a night shift," Murdock answered.

"You're a nice guy, Murdock," Jean said, "You may know that B.A. likes you despite his daily attempts to choke you, but most people would not put up with half the stuff he does to you."

"It's just the way he is," Murdock told her, "See the big guy has a reputation to maintain and if word got out about how big of a softie he really is, he'd never be able to live it down."

Jean snorted and observed, "He certainly hides it well."

"He tries, but I see through him, _you_ see through him," Murdock said, "Otherwise when he blinks at you, you'd be hitting the ceiling like everybody else."

"If I thought he'd actually clock me, maybe," Jean replied, "But you guys have your own reputation of not hitting women…what's the word for that, chauvinistic?"

"Well in B.A.'s defense if he did that he'd kill them," Murdock explained.

"So noted," Jean said as she traced a circle around her eye, "Now you explain something else to me. You hit B.A. anywhere in his whole body, nothing fazes him, but you hit him in the head and down he goes like a ton of bricks, why is that?"

"I told you," Murdock said, "He's got a soft spot in his head, that's why Hannibal's always able to knock him out with a 2 by 4."

"Yeah well, one of these days that soft head of his is going to be immune to all those beatings, and then where're you going to be?" Jean asked.

"Hopefully far away when Hannibal finds out," Murdock replied humorously.

After they ate they settled on the couch, Jean leaning back against Murdock as they listened to the rain outside and watched the Christmas programs on TV. After a while, Murdock realized that Jean had fallen asleep against him, and he had an idea she'd stay that way for the rest of the night. He knew she seldom slept on her back so with a little careful maneuvering he got her turned around so she had her head resting on his chest and her back pressed into the back cushions on the couch. He reached up and pulled the afghan off the back and draped it over to the two of them and quietly murmured, "Goodnight, darling."

* * *

The next day the ground was trying to dry out but since everything was at a significantly lower temperature than usual, it was taking its sweet time, and as such Jean had warned Murdock not to go chasing Billy all through the mud, and if the dog did get out, she told him to let him stay out for the morning, because the last thing she needed was to have to clean his paw prints or Murdock's shoe prints for that matter, off all the floors.

"Well you're in luck," he said as he looked out the front window, "Here come Face and Amy, and you know how particular Face is about looking nice, he's jumping over all the mud puddles."

"What're they doing here?" she asked.

Murdock opened the door to find out, Amy squeezed past him first carrying an armload of small wrapped packages, and Face had a harder time getting past Murdock carrying a couple of much larger presents.

"What's all that?" Jean asked.

Face rolled his eyes and said, "The butcher shop has become more decorative in how he wraps the pork chops, what do you think? These are the presents for Christmas."

"Alright, let me rephrase, what are they doing _here_?" Jean asked.

"Boy you couldn't be nice to save your life, could you?" Face asked, "We're bringing them over now so they'll be ready for Christmas."

"And what are you doing here?" Jean asked Amy, "I thought you had to work today."

"I called in a sick day," she answered, "I'm entitled to them after the year I've had."

They put the presents under the tree and sat down on the couch with Jean and Murdock as they went over a bunch of little last minute ideas for the party. This turned into a visit that lasted a couple of hours, during which time everybody started to nod off listening to Murdock's plans. Around 11 that morning, they heard a vehicle pull up out front, and a minute later the front door opened and Hannibal came in shouting orders, "Face, Murdock, out to the van, we've got a new client."

Face groaned and Murdock yawned and stretched before getting up, and he asked the Colonel, "What's it this time, Hannibal?"

"Emergency case, kidnapped children," Hannibal explained.

"On our way, Colonel!" Murdock saluted as he and Face ran out to the van in the driveway.

"What's going on, Hannibal?" Amy asked.

"I'll explain later," he said, "First I've got to swing by my place, pick up my makeup kit and get down to the docks, if this is the real deal and it most likely is, we've got to get a plan together and fast."

That didn't stop the women however from giving him the third degree before they let him out the door. Amy wanted to know how he knew it was real, and Jean wanted to know what the hurry was. Hannibal answered the journalist's question first, "Briggs was shipped out to Alaska this morning, Decker's back in office and we've got a sweet deal with him to keep us in the pink until New Year, without him it's unlikely the MPs would have the brains to set this as a trap for us instead." And then in regards to Jean's question he said, "This isn't a matter of ransom, now ransom cases in themselves are a 50/50 chance that the kid will even still be alive when the money's paid, but if they're not asking for money then they're either definitely going to kill that kid, or they've got something worse in mind for them. And whichever is the case, I want to get them back to their mother before Christmas and as soon as possible."

"Good luck," Jean said.


	12. Chapter 12

Although Hannibal believed that this new client was the genuine article, he still didn't believe in taking too many chances. So before revealing himself, he had still decided to put their new would-be client through a test, leading the woman to a private place where they could speak freely; but upon meeting their client, Hannibal realized they were getting more than he had originally bargained for. Instead of one mother sick with worry about her child, they had two mothers and both of them looked like they hadn't slept in days.

The location that the old fisherman on the dock had sent them to was a run down building that in a previous life may have been a bar, but now looked like one of the better abandoned warehouses in existence. It didn't see a regular dusting though the place wasn't coated in gray; there was a bare minimum of furniture, all of it at least 20 years old, wooden and in need of new paint, nails, oil, etc. None of them really used the chairs much and given the condition they were in, B.A. opted to stand for their meeting, as did Hannibal. Murdock would've sat down except while they were waiting he decided to keep himself occupied and he found entertainment in a potted plant in the corner of the room, and how it was still alive was anybody's guess. Face stood at one of the tables with Hannibal and B.A. like King Arthur's knights as they discussed what was going on.

"You said one woman," Face reminded him, "How did we get another one without you knowing?"

"We rushed it, Face," Hannibal said, "I don't like waiting around on cases that involve missing kids and since we don't have to worry about Decker trying to trap us I decided we could set the wheels in motion faster than usual. It's to my understanding that these kids have already been missing for several days and you know as well as I do if there's no ransom call, if they're not found within the first 48 hours then the odds are they won't be, not alive anyway."

"Right, but how're we going to find out where they are?" Face asked.

"I'm getting to that…the way I understand it is the mothers have an idea where their kids are being held, it's more a matter of us getting in there and getting them out."

"Company coming, Hannibal," B.A. told him.

Hannibal looked at the two women as they came in the front door and into the main room; on the dock when he'd first encountered the two women he had learned their names: Eliza Breckenridge and Angela Thomas. They were both between 35 and 40, Eliza, who looked two shakes away from a nervous breakdown, had bobbed black hair and a slightly paler complexion than Angela, the blonde woman who was managing to hold herself together with as much effort as if she was trying to hold up the entire planet on her shoulders.

"Sorry for the confusion, ladies," Hannibal said as he finished peeling away his disguise, "But we had to make sure that you weren't followed, there are plenty of people who would like to have us put away and we have to take all precautions when meeting our clients. I'm Hannibal Smith, this is B.A. Baracus, that is Templeton Peck the Faceman, and that gentleman over in the corner talking to the plant is H.M. Murdock. Now, why don't you take it from the top and tell us what's going on?"

Angela went first and explained that she and Eliza weren't close friends and didn't know each other very well at all, their only connection to one another was that they both lived on the same block and both of them had found out their children had been kidnapped. There seemed to be a connection in the disappearances, so they decided to go in together to hire the A-Team, figuring it would be harder for them to say no to two mothers instead of one at a time. Angela's daughter was 10 years old and her son was 8, she had a recent photo of them and took it out to show the A-Team; they saw a blonde girl in a red shirt and blue jeans who looked tiny for her age and a boy about the same size dressed in overalls and a white T-shirt.

"I hadn't gotten home from work when it happened," she told them, "The neighbors had seen somebody grab Allison and Danny and throw them in a black van that sped away. They managed to get the plate number though, they ran it by the DMV and found out it's registered to a man named Liam Stone."

"I think I've heard of that guy," Murdock said.

"You should, he's a big money man, and he's got enough that he can get anything he wants and get away with anything he wants," Angela said.

Eliza hadn't been able to hold herself together too well from the start and by now the dam burst, as did she burst into tears, for what Hannibal could tell was _not_ the first time that day. Angela sighed sympathetically and explained, "Eliza's case is more complicated to explain."

For a minute they thought the other woman was going to collapse, but she pulled herself together long enough to explain, "My daughter Chloe is 8 years old, and that bastard father of hers took me to court to get her after we were divorced…his family is friends with the judge who saw the case so of _course_ he got her and I was made out to be an unfit mother even though I've been the only one there for her 24/7. A while back my lawyer and I started working on an appeal to get the custody order reversed, I had ordered the transcripts from the first case to be used for the appeal to get Chloe back, but after I paid for it I read it over and saw that all the damning testimony that he and his family gave in the first case that would help me get her back were taken out of the records."

Face couldn't help asking, "Did you get a hold of the stenographer who was working in that courtroom at the time?"

"Oh yeah, I did," she answered angrily, she blew her nose and said, "I told him that everything my ex-husband and his mother said that proved they perjured themselves were taken out of the transcript, and he just smiled at me and said 'I'm an old man, I forget things'."

"Oh really?" B.A. asked, obvious to everybody by the tone in his voice that his blood was already boiling, "What's this sucker's name?"

"In a minute, B.A.," Hannibal told him, and to Eliza he said, "Go on."

"I've raised Chloe for 8 years, now all of a sudden he has her and has his girlfriend teaching her to call _her_ mommy, I get to see my daughter one day out of every damn month," she fell forward with her head in her hands as she started sobbing again. Murdock went over to her and offered her his shoulder to cry on as she tried to compose herself. His presence didn't seem to be of any help to her except she had somebody to grab on to so she stayed balanced on her feet, but she started squeezing the air out of him after a while and they had to help her sit down in one of the chairs before she continued.

"The _day_ that I get to have her with me," she continued, "We just get home, we get out of the car, another van comes up, a gray one, two men get out, one of them knocks me down and the other one grabs Chloe up and they speed off while I can still hear her screaming for help."

"Were you able to get its plate number?" Face asked.

"No, but I don't believe in coincidences and when Angela told me what happened to her kids, they just have to be the same people responsible. We both called the police, and they said since I didn't get a look at the men or the license number, there's nothing they can do."

"Do you have a picture of your daughter?" Hannibal asked.

Eliza wiped the tears under one eye with the back of her hand and said, "Yeah, it's a couple of months old because I haven't really had any chance to get any new pictures taken of her." She took a crumpled snapshot out of her purse and gave it to Hannibal. This little girl had long black hair and a somber expression on her face, making her look too old to be as young as she was, and she looked to be slightly bigger than Angela's daughter, Allison.

"But what's this Stone guy want with your kids?" Face asked.

"Well of course we can't _prove_ anything," Angela said, "But we think that the reason he's so rich is that he's kidnapping children and…selling them on the black market, slave rings or something, something like that…it's the only thing that makes sense." Knowing something may be true was one thing, but actually giving voice to it and acknowledging it was another, and it was obvious that about did Angela in to admit what horrible fate most likely awaited their kids.

"Did you tell the police your suspicions?" Hannibal asked.

"I told them that the van was registered to Stone, but they said that there's nothing they can do. _We_ would have to have _proof_ that he has our children, to do that we would have to go out to his property and look around, and we would have to get his permission to do that, and the police said they can't get a warrant to search the place because they would also need Stone's permission and cooperation."

"Which of course he won't do," Hannibal said, "And they know it."

"We already tried getting in, we tried getting all the details we could so we could help you if you take our case. His place is up near the state line."

"Which state?" Face asked.

"It's just off the border from Oregon," Eliza answered, "That land of his is about 200 acres, the main entrance is gated off, guards posted at every corner, the house alone must be 50 rooms, there's plenty of space that he could be hiding the kids."

"And could hide them even better if somebody actually _did_ take the trouble to come out and look for them," Face added, "A place that big you'd have plenty of a head start to run them off so anyone deliberately looking for them wouldn't be able to find them."

"Nobody will look for them, we went to the local police, we went to the state police, we spoke to private investigators, judges, lawyers, everybody, nobody will help us. He's got enough money to pay off everyone," Eliza said.

"Not _every_one," Hannibal assured her.

"Mr. Smith, _please_, you've got to find our children," Angela said, she hung her head low and admitted, "We don't have much money, Eliza's ex took her for everything she had and I'm a single parent with two kids, but we'll find some way to pay your fee, no matter how long it takes."

Hannibal held his hand up dismissively and said, "That won't be necessary, given the time of the year you qualify for our Christmas discount."

"That's right," B.A. added, "Don't worry, mama, we'll get your kids back safe and sound, and then I'm gonna break every bone in those suckers' bodies."

"That's B.A. for you," Face said, trying to lighten the mood a bit, "All heart."

"He's right though," Hannibal told the two mothers, "We'll get your kids back, in the meantime it would be best if you two went home and tried to go about your usual routine until we get in contact with you again. Don't talk to police, don't talk to reporters, don't even talk to your neighbors about this, we don't need anybody accidentally leaking this to Stone or any of his assistants."

Angela nodded in agreement and helped Eliza to her feet and they walked out the front door. Angela turned back and said to them before she stepped outside, "Mr. Smith, you've just _got_ to find our children, you can't know how horrible this is."

"You're right, I can't, and I'm sorry," he told her bluntly, "But we'll find them and get them back to you safe and sound, I give you my word on that."

Angela nodded weakly and followed Eliza out and the two women disappeared around the corner.

"Hannibal, I mean it this time," B.A. told him, "I said I'm gonna break every bone in that sucker's body and I'm gonna, him and that court reporter _and_ that judge _and_ that ex husband."

"If we have time you certainly may, Sergeant," Hannibal humored him.

"Hey B.A.," Murdock said, "See if you can get that in writing."

Hannibal ignored Murdock's comment and continued, "But it sounds like this is going to be a lengthy mission. First of all we have to find out what we're going to be getting into when we go to pay a call to Mr. Liam Stone, so Face…"

"Don't tell me," he said, "Get a helicopter."

"Right," Hannibal told him, "Obviously however it's going to have to wait until we actually _get_ there with Stone being so far away. Now there's no telling what they've done to those kids and it sounds like there's going to be a lot more than three, so we need to make sure we're stocked up on all first aid supplies, get some canteens and make sure we have plenty of water, get some blankets too…"

Hannibal counted off everything they were going to need for the mission that he could think of so far, everybody had their own jobs assigned to them and they all took off to start on them, all, except Murdock.

"Something wrong, Captain?" Hannibal asked.

"Well Colonel, it sounds to me like this mission might take several days to pull off…and I was just wondering if it was possible, before we leave, if I could go back to the house and say goodbye to Jean first? It won't take long and it is important."

Hannibal smiled and said, "Sure, Captain, that's doable, we won't be moving out until first thing tomorrow morning anyway when we have everything together we need. Besides, if they have those kids on that property, we'll only be able to see them in the daytime anyway."

"You really think he has those kids, Colonel? Murdock asked.

"I think he has them, and plenty more where they came from," Hannibal said, "Missing children statistics are always high, but I've noticed that they seem to be getting higher around here recently."

* * *

"So Hannibal's thinking we'll only have to spend a few days down there getting everything sorted out and then we'll be able to come home," Murdock explained to Jean as they walked down one of the aisles at the grocery store, "We'll still have plenty of time to get back before Christmas."

"It sounds like this guy's been doing it for a long time," Jean said, "You're never going to be able to find _all_ the children he stole and sold."

"Unfortunately not but fortunately we'll be able to get these kids back to their mothers and with any luck find out where some of the others were relocated to and get them as well," Murdock replied, "Hannibal says that people always keep records of everything, including things they don't want anybody to know about, so we could find a paper trail telling us at least how many there have been and where they went, after all he wouldn't want to get shorted by a client who paid for three kids and got four instead."

"Murdock, what do you think those people are doing with those kids?" Jean asked.

"Uh…well you hear about child labor? I think a lot of them, since they're kidnapped well past the impressionable toddler age, are being used as people's cleaning girls and sweatshop slaves, something like that. Whatever it is, we're going to find out and we're going to rescue them."

Jean could tell that Murdock was getting excited and worked up, both in anger at what was going on, and in anticipation of what they were going to do to Stone and his men in return. As they turned the corner at the end of the aisle, Jean bumped into someone going in the opposite direction and she turned around and walked backwards.

"What is it?" Murdock asked.

Jean shook it off and faced front again, "Thought I saw something. So when do you guys leave?"

"Officially we don't move out until tomorrow but tonight we have to get all of our supplies ready," Murdock told her, "So I'll be leaving from here."

"I see," she said.

Murdock kissed her on the cheek and said, "Fear not, darling, I shall return, with bells on."

"I'm sure you will," Jean replied, "But do me a favor will you, Murdock? When you find this guy, bash his brains in once for me, okay?"

"You got it," he nodded, "Now, are you going to be okay while we're gone?"

"Sure, I'll be fine," she told him, "I've been looking after myself long enough that I know how to do it right."

Murdock laughed and said, "Of that I have no doubt. Now, can you take care of all that other stuff I told you about while I'm gone?"

"Yeah, I got your list, your directions, everything," Jean said.

"Oh and take care of Billy for me until I get back," Murdock told her.

"Of course."

"Okay, I'll see you 'round, Jean."

She waved him off and watched him walk out the store's automatic doors. Outside Face was waiting for him in the 'Vette and already had the engine on.

"Ready to go, Murdock?" he asked as the pilot swung his legs over the door and sat down beside him.

"Burn rubber, Faceman," Murdock pointed to the road ahead.

He put it in gear and they were off and running.

* * *

Hannibal had told Face to get them a helicopter, and he hadn't meant to wait until they were bordering Oregon. Even given as fast as B.A. could drive, it would still take them too long to get out to Liam Stone's property by taking the van, but also they couldn't fit all the supplies they would need in a chopper either, not the kind he could get them on short notice anyway. So instead he had managed to scam them a plane, and before B.A. had a chance to make that unpleasant discovery, Hannibal had come up behind him and called out, "Oops!" as he 'accidentally' hit the sergeant in the back of the head with his machine gun.

"You know, Hannibal," Face said as they hauled him up the stairs, "I get the feeling that when he wakes up he's not going to believe that was an accident."

"Maybe not, but when that happens he won't have a chance to do anything about it," Hannibal replied as they got on board, "We got everything on here?"

"Yeah," Face answered, "All the weapons, all the ammo, extra water, medical supplies, everything you told us to get, we got it."

"Good," Hannibal brought the stairs up and closed the hatch and called up to the cockpit, "Alright, Captain, proceed with the takeoff!"

"Right-o, Colonel!"

"Alright, now here's what I'm thinking," Hannibal told Face once they left the ground, "The women said that property in itself is about 200 acres, what do you want to bet to even get out there would take us a couple miles out of civilization?"

"If it was Montana I'd say no doubt, Oregon I'm not sure about," Face replied.

"Anyway," Hannibal said, "We could be looking at a _lot_ of kids."

"And we want to get them all loaded up in one trip and out of there if possible," Face was starting to see where this was going, "So…"

"Get a bus," they said simultaneously.

"Right, but Hannibal, how many kids can we _fit_ on a bus?"

"Depending on the size you get," Hannibal said, "I figure about 80 of them, maybe more if some of them stand. But I'm hoping we're _not_ going to be looking at that many."

"Alright, but let's say we do, or let's say we even get 50 of them…just what are we going to do with them all? We only know _two_ of the parents involved, and we _still_ have to fix Eliza Breckenridge's problem with that judge and her ex-husband when we get back too."

"Yeah," Hannibal agreed.

"Colonel," they heard Murdock's voice come on over the loudspeaker, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"I'll be back," Hannibal told Face as he got up and walked up the aisle to the cockpit. "Something wrong, Captain?"

"Well yeah, but I just have a question about something," Murdock said as he turned around to see him.

"What's that?"

"I was just thinking, you notice when those 'Have you seen this child?' posters come out and they're on the milk cartons, that it seems a lot more of them are girls than boys?"

"Hmmm, I hadn't noticed," Hannibal said.

"And you ever notice," Murdock continued, "That when they're actually _found_, boys are more likely to be found alive than the girls? Why do you think that is?"

Hannibal shrugged, "I wish I knew, Murdock, I really wish I knew."

* * *

"I've had it with this, Hannibal!" B.A. said once they all got off the plane. Miraculously they were able to get the landing completed in an abandoned area where they wouldn't be seen by land or air by anybody passing by, and managed to get B.A. off before he started to come to; but they'd only managed to get him as far as the ground under the stairs before he woke up. "I told you before I wasn't flying, and what happens? Somehow once again I get put on a plane and flown hundreds of miles out to the middle of nowhere."

"Look on the bright side, B.A., we're still in California!" Face said.

"Face is right," Murdock said as they got their supplies unloaded, "It's hardly like the time we went to Guatemala, or Borneo, or Ecuador…"

"Murdock, stop trying to make a point," Face warned him.

"B.A. I'm only going to explain this to you one more time," Hannibal said, "If we had driven up here it would've taken 12 hours and we wouldn't even be set up until tomorrow, and by that time we've got to get everything ready on _this_ end and be ready to move in. When time is of the essence, we _fly_."

"No, _you_ fly," B.A. replied, "Next time you suckers try going somewhere in one of those tin cans with the crazy fool, you'll be doing it without me."

"Oh quit being a big baby," Murdock said, "The point is we're here and we can get to work, now what's the first step of the plan, Colonel?"

"Somebody's going to have to go up to Stone's place and scout it out, see if there's any way we can get in," Hannibal said, "See if any of the kids are in sight, _and_ also see if there are any traps visible to the human eye."

"Alright, but which one of us is going to do that?" Face asked.

"Has to be someone who isn't going to set the guards off," Hannibal said, "So that automatically disqualifies B.A., so it's going to be either you or Murdock, Face."

Face looked to the pilot and he returned the stare and they considered their options.

"What reason would we have for being up there miles out of civilization?" Face asked.

Murdock had his hand up and said, "I've got it, let me do it, Colonel, please."

"Murdock?" B.A. snorted, "Forget that."

"B.A., I've got a plan."

"Shut up, fool, you' too crazy to have a plan."

Hannibal was open to suggestions, "What've you got, Captain?"

* * *

"Billy!" Murdock called and whistled as he ran up to the main gate on the heavily wooded area on the hill two miles up from the main roads. "Billy! Where are ya, boy?"

The noise he'd been making for the last few blocks had definitely aroused suspicion in the men who were guarding the premises, and as Murdock was about to touch the metal gate that stood ten feet high and had razor wire strung over the tops, he saw two men with automatic rifles coming towards him.

"What do you want?" one of them asked him.

"Have you seen my dog, Billy?" Murdock asked, "My car went into a ditch about a mile back and the little rascal jumped out and disappeared on me."

"No dog," the second guard answered.

"Are you sure?" Murdock asked, "He's about this big, and he's got a furry little tail and two eyes and a big pink tongue with purple splotches and he likes to stick it out like this," he demonstrated and panted in comparison.

"I told you before there's no dog around here," the guard told him.

"Billy's a climber, he can climb up in trees like a cat, you know how they do," he gestured with his hands, "Just kind of jungle gym up there and he might've gotten up one of the trees around here, you mind if I look around? He's a nice boy but he's a bit stupid, can't figure out how to get _down_ from a tree once he gets into one."

The guard raised his gun at Murdock to make a point and told him, "I told you already that there's no dog around here, and you are trespassing on private property."

Murdock put on a clueless act and said, "I thought as long as you're outside the gate that it counts as public property."

"Not here, pal, now get lost."

Murdock nodded uncertainly and said, "Alright, well thanks for your help," and he turned and walked away from the place as fast as he could until he disappeared down the hill.

He looked back and saw the guards move away from the gate; he waited a couple of minutes and went back, this time he got off the main dirt road and took refuge behind some of the trees. He found one that looked particularly promising for climbing and he put his years of pretending to be a monkey to good use. He shimmied about fifteen feet up and looked around at everything; the closed off property inside the gate that seemed to span on forever, the wooded area outside the gate that he was wandering around in. He also looked around at the gate itself, and tried to see around past the house to what was in back of the yard. He had just caught sight of a couple of smaller buildings that might've been tool sheds, when he heard a gun cock from down below. He looked down and saw one of the guards standing at the bottom of the tree with his rifle aimed up at him.

"Squirrel season already?" Murdock asked with a small laugh, "Had to check…that dumb dog…" Slowly he slid down to the bottom of the tree and said, "I'll just be going now."

"Yeah," the guard told him.

Once he got down far enough that they couldn't see him again, Murdock raised his wrist towards his mouth and said into his jacket cuff, "These guys could shut down Times Square 10 seconds after the ball drops."

"Were you able to find out anything, Murdock?" Hannibal asked.

"When they said 200 acres, I don't think they were even counting what all's inside the gates, never mind what's on the outside of them," Murdock said, "You could hold the Grand Prix just around the house itself."

"Murdock."

"I think the fence is electrified," Murdock said, "They made sure not to touch it but they were going to let me put my hands on it. And I'm not sure but I think they got it rigged up to an alarm."

"What kind of alarm?" Hannibal asked.

"I think to make sure nobody tries cutting the power, if they try killing the current for the fence then it sets off something like those old air raid sirens," Murdock explained, "I noticed those old bullhorn sound speakers on a building out behind the house. But there must be a main power switch or a part of the yard that ain't fenced off because one of those little buggers was able to sneak up under me outside the gate."

"They want to make sure nobody tries being a hero," Hannibal observed.

"You think it's to keep the kids _in_ or any potential help _out_?" Face asked.

"Probably both," Hannibal said, "Murdock it's going to be getting dark soon, when it does we're all going to come back and see what we can find without the guards spotting us, in the meantime get back to base with us."

"Roger, Colonel," Murdock saluted. He took one more look back to the gated property up the hill and said a silent prayer for the children that he knew were in there somewhere.


	13. Chapter 13

Murdock had joined the others back at the airplane but it was a short stay because they went into town to get some more supplies, and dinner. Since they had a busy night ahead of them they decided not to stay long and just stopped off at a diner and got some burgers. While they waited for their food to come to the table, Murdock found a payphone and called Jean real quick just to check in and see how things were going back home.

"Everything's going fine here, Murdock," Jean told him, "Did the flight go okay?"

"Well it did until B.A. woke up," he answered, "Fortunately we already got him off the plane when that happened."

"Good," Jean replied, "What'd you find out so far?"

"Well we found the place, now we've got to check it out," Murdock told her, "Won't be easy, I tried earlier and while I was up an oak tree being an eye in the sky, a groundhog down below was getting ready to deliver my mail."

"You take care of yourself, Murdock," Jean said, "I want you coming back in one piece so you can see what I got you for Christmas."

"I will," he assured her, "Meanwhile you take care of your own self, ya hear?"

Jean laughed, "Don't have to worry about that, Murdock, nothing ever happens around here, you know that."

"Well then be careful not to die of boredom," he told her, "I reckon we'll be home in a couple of days, three at the latest. So you just keep my side of the bed cold until then and I'll return to heat it up myself."

"You got it," she replied.

"Is Billy behaving himself?" Murdock asked.

"Yeah he's fine," she answered, "He ain't found that giant invisible rawhide bone you got him yet."

Murdock raised a finger to his lips and shushed her over the phone, "Don't let him hear that, I don't want him finding it before Christmas."

Jean laughed and said, "I'll see you when you get back, Murdock."

"Okay, hon, bye-bye," Murdock said and hung up the phone. He turned and saw one of the other customers standing behind him and looking at him oddly and Murdock said only, by way of explanation, "My mother." And he shoved off and went back to his table just as their food came.

"How's everything going on the home front, Captain?" Hannibal inquired.

"Snafu, Colonel," Murdock answered, "Jean seems to be holding up alright."

"Why wouldn't she?" Face asked, "Nothing ever happens at her house, nothing _has_ happened there since that time Decker busted in and we made him think he lost his mind."

Murdock's soda came back out through his nose in memory of that and he said, "Yeah, that was a lot of fun, I sure do miss that."

"I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunities to try it again after the New Year," Hannibal told him.

After they ate and Hannibal paid the bill, they left the diner and headed back to the car Face had rented for them to use for the time being because it was one hell of a long walk getting back to and from town and back to the airplane, and from the airplane up to just out of the guards' sights at the mansion. Murdock stopped just before getting in and said he had an errand to run first and would be back in a minute, and he took off running and disappeared around the corner.

"Where do you think he's going?" Face asked Hannibal.

Hannibal only shrugged as he lit his after-dinner cigar and said, "Beats me."

Where Murdock went was to a small grocery store on the street behind the diner that was still open. He took a detour down to the candy aisle and cleaned them out of candy canes, chocolate bars and lollipops; he had decided that it would be a nice surprise once they rescued the children if they had something sweet to eat during the long drive back home. He got his purchase stuffed in a large brown paper bag that looked big enough to make a whole case of sherry become inconspicuous and he rolled the top over like a lunch bag and carried it with him back to the car. When the others asked why he had to take off like a madman (bad joke) and what he got, he refused to answer and said only that all would be revealed in due time.

* * *

Once the sun had started going down, and the shadows became the only thing visible instead of an extension of the things plainly visible in the daylight, they had moved out and walked back up the hill to what Hannibal had so affectionately nicknamed the Californian concentration camp. They all had guns, flashlights, first aid supplies, radios, everything they could carry on them that they anticipated needing during the night.

"This place looks like Alcatraz, Hannibal," Murdock whispered to him, "That fence just seems to go on forever."

"Definitely looks like a prison alright," Face agreed, "Odd because you never see one that looks like it belongs in Beverly Hills."

"Right, but don't forget Stone seems to own the land on the _outside_ of it as well," he reminded the pilot, "So keep your eyes open, there could be anything out here, more guards, booby traps, anything's possible."

"Right, that's why we're here," Face dryly added.

"And also check for any gap in the fencing, any tunnels leading under the gate, any way that the guards could get in and out without tripping the alarm, remember," Hannibal told them as they walked together, "We've got to figure out a way we can get _in_ here tomorrow and get _out_ with the kids as fast as possible with as little trouble in between the two points. So keep your eyes peeled for _anything_ we can use to our advantage, and _everything_ we need to dismantle first."

"Right," the others agreed.

They all took off on different parts of the land surrounding the gates to see what they could find. They were each too far away now to hear each other, so they kept in touch by their radios if they found anything. So far Murdock hadn't used his radio, and hadn't heard anybody else come through on theirs either. He tested every step of the ground ahead of him to make sure that he wasn't stepping into a booby trap. After serving in Vietnam they all had a few ideas of what to look for; though he sincerely hoped anything these jokers could come up with would be something new compared to what the Viet-Cong soldiers used almost 20 years ago. Though on the other hand, why not stick with what worked? And in any case, when it was the Cong's traps they _knew_ what to look for.

As he did that, he also looked past the gates up to the house. The women who hired them were right, it was a huge place, and it definitely looked like it could easily have 50 rooms to it, and it sure as hell looked like a good place for hiding several dozen children. That brought a question to his mind and he scratched his head as he considered it, and decided that when he met up with Hannibal in a little while, he'd ask the Colonel about it. He also noticed that all the lights seemed to be out in the house, but it wasn't that late; or maybe it was only on this side, maybe the people inside were all up on the other side of the house where he couldn't see the lights. Or maybe there wasn't even anyone there, he didn't know where that thought came from but suddenly he was hoping they weren't tramping around here in the night all for nothing.

So far so good, no spikes, no trap doors built in the ground, he considered getting on his radio to let Hannibal know how it was going on his end so far, but he decided against it and instead decided to hold off on it until he actually found something. He didn't find something, somebody found him, and before he could make a sound he felt something sharp, heard something snap, and saw everything go black. His last conscious thought was to _not_ make a reach for his radio, he couldn't call out for help, and if his attacker didn't know he was there with others, maybe the Team wouldn't be discovered. That was the last thing in his mind before he felt himself hit the ground.

* * *

Hannibal hadn't thought it was dark enough to take his penlight out to use yet, and he immediately regretted that when he felt somebody bump into him and it was too dark to see who it was. But he quickly found out it was only Face, who also looked like a cat scared out of half of its lives.

"Have you found anything yet?" he asked.

"Not yet, you?" Face asked.

Hannibal shook his head, "I wonder how the others are…"

"HANNIBAL!" they heard B.A. yell from somewhere else off on the grounds.

"That doesn't sound good," Face said as they took off running in the direction the yell had come from.

Even though it was dark they were clearly able to see B.A. on the ground hovered over Murdock as he performed a set of chest compressions all the while he muttered, "Come on, Murdock, come on."

"What happened?" Hannibal asked as they dropped down beside him.

"I don't know, I heard somebody go down, I came and found Murdock, somebody knocked him cold and he ain't breathing!" B.A. checked again for any vitals and didn't find any, so he started performing CPR.

"Face," Hannibal said grimly, "Get the first aid kit, I'm going to try something."

Face didn't know what it was he was going to try, and he didn't have time to ask, not that he could even think of the question if he'd had the chance.

"Come on, Murdock, wake up," B.A. said as he started on another series of chest compressions, but it all seemed to be to no avail.

"Here's the kit, Hannibal," Face said as he dropped it beside the Colonel, "What're you going to do?"

"I'm going to try something," Hannibal repeated as he turned his light on and shone it over the contents of the kit. He found a bottle of something he'd been looking for and told B.A., "Get off of him for a second, I'm going to try this."

B.A. took his hands off Murdock's chest and they watched as Hannibal pulled the top off the bottle and poured the contents onto his hand and he applied it directly under Murdock's nose. After a couple of seconds, like a car engine finally turning over, Murdock kicked his feet in the air and started coughing, gagging, and screaming as he pawed at his face with his hands, "What is that? Get it off! Get it off, I'll talk! I'll talk! Uncle! Uncle!"

"Murdock!" Face almost passed out in relief when he saw the Captain get up.

"Murdock, what happened?" Hannibal asked.

But Face had another question and it was for Hannibal, "What was that stuff you used on him, Hannibal?"

Hannibal turned the label towards them and said, "Yager's liniment, I remember as a kid my mother talking about how this was used to revive a few small children during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, when they stopped breathing and their hearts stopped the parents put some liniment under their nose as a last resort and they came back kicking and screaming."

"Whew! I'll say!" Murdock said as he frantically rubbed at his nose.

"Murdock, you alright, man?" B.A. asked as he put a hand on the other man's shoulder.

"Yeah I think so, just got wrap on the head is all I think," he answered.

"What happened?" they asked again.

"Somebody knocked me out," he answered.

"Did you see who it was?" Face asked.

"No…but I think it was one of the guards who saw me earlier," he said.

"It'd have to be," Face thought.

"B.A., you didn't see anyone when you found him?" Hannibal asked.

B.A. shook his head, "There wasn't anybody here, Hannibal."

"So now what do we do?" Face asked.

"He could still be around, Colonel," Murdock said, "Maybe watching us from somewhere in the dark."

"Shut up, Murdock, stop talking crazy," B.A. told him.

"Whoever it was knows I'm here," Murdock insisted, "He's got to be putting the pieces together to some kind of conclusion to what that means."

"Not necessarily," Hannibal said, "I get the feeling that Stone's up to more than one dirty game and he probably gets people out here all the time looking for a way in, or at least a way to get him locked up. But he thinks nobody can touch him and he leaves his guards to deal with the trespassers, _and_ if he's already gone, he probably either thinks you're dead, or that he just knocked you out and won't remember anything when you come to. So I'd say for the time being we're safe."

"Can't be sure about that, Hannibal," Murdock replied.

"No, but until I see reason to think otherwise, I'm going to stick by it," he replied.

"So what do we do now?" Face asked.

"B.A.," Hannibal said, "Get Murdock out of here."

"What?" Murdock asked.

"Take him back to the plane," Hannibal said, "We'll be using that as our base for tonight, Face and I'll stay on here and see what we can find out and if we need anything we'll call in on the radios. _If_ they catch us, then we'll be able to find out where the kids are and you'll hear us on your radio."

"Alright," B.A. said as he helped Murdock up, "At least I know you ain't gonna be flying that rust bucket anywhere tonight."

"But I don't want to go," Murdock said, sounding like a kid whining over taking a bath.

"Murdock, after what just happened, you need to rest and we also need to make sure nothing else is wrong with you, and B.A. will be able to figure that out once you get back on the plane and get the lights on," Hannibal explained.

Murdock reluctantly agreed and said, "Alright…"

Hannibal sensed that there was tension in the air connected to Murdock's reluctance to leave, so he took the captain aside for a minute and explained to him, "It's nothing personal, Murdock, it's not that I doubt you can help us, it's just that we had a close call and almost lost you tonight, and my old heart can't take too many of those surprises in one night."

Murdock slowly nodded and said, "Alright, Colonel, I'll go…did I really scare you?"

"If I was a cat," Hannibal answered, "I'd be on my 8th life."

Murdock pointed back to the others and asked, "Face and B.A. too?"

"_Especially_ B.A.," Hannibal told him.

This revelation surprised the pilot and he agreed with more conviction to go with B.A. back to the airplane for the time being. In any case he knew somebody had to stay back and be on guard to make sure nobody discovered the plane, and that was an important job to him as well, he didn't take kindly to anybody hurting his planes.

* * *

B.A. had to admit, when the plane was staying on the ground, without a doubt, then the inside of these things could be pretty useful; Face certainly knew how to scam the best, in fact the plane's interior reminded him of a few of the penthouses the Lieutenant had managed to scam over the past couple of years.

He could hear Murdock moaning and went to see the pilot, who had been sprawled over three of the plane's first class seats and had draped his jacket over him like a blanket for the night.

"You alright, Murdock?" B.A. asked.

"Yeah, fine," Murdock tiredly groaned, "Hey thanks, B.A., I real-ly appreciate what you did for me tonight…" he forced his eyes open and looked up at B.A. and said curiously, "You really were worried about me tonight, weren't you?"

"Yeah, I was," B.A. answered simply, and added, "Don't ever scare me like that again, fool."

"I wasn't trying to scare you," Murdock said.

"I know," B.A. nodded as he lightly patted the top of Murdock's head, "Go on to sleep, I'll wake you up when it's your shift."

"Okay," Murdock yawned and settled down in the seats. He tried curling into a ball and B.A. took the hint. He took a blanket down from one of the overhead bins and covered the pilot with it so he'd be warm for the night. Murdock hummed contentedly in his sleep as he was able to uncurl himself and straighten back out.

B.A. watched Murdock as he eased into sleep, absentmindedly he reached down and squeezed the pilot's shoulder. Yes he _had_ been worried when he found Murdock sprawled on the ground and not breathing, couldn't find a heartbeat anywhere, it had scared the hell out of him; he got tired of all of Murdock's crazy behavior but he'd never want anything to happen to him, nothing _serious_ anyway. He'd never say anything to the others but he felt like he'd had a few years taken off of him by that little discovery tonight.

He kept one ear open for the radio, so far he hadn't heard anything out of Hannibal or Face; he knew that if he hadn't heard from them within an hour to come back to the 'camp' and check it out. They still had another half hour before that happened. When they'd gotten back to the plane, B.A. looked Murdock over and found a couple scrapes on the back of his head and got them cleaned up but other than that he appeared to be alright. The only loss suffered in the attack was somehow the radio transmitter in his jacket cuff had been broken, snapped into little pieces, he wouldn't have been able to call out for help even if he'd been conscious.

B.A. didn't have to get a report from them on the radio, within 20 minutes they came back to the plane and reported that basically they had nothing to report, and would have to wait until tomorrow when Face got them a helicopter so he and Murdock could fly over the area to find anymore answers about the place.

"Hannibal there's just one thing I'm wondering," Face said, "Isn't it going to look kind of odd a helicopter just suddenly flying over them? I mean it doesn't look like there's much traffic of any kind around here, even in the air."

"That's why you're going to go into town tomorrow and borrow the local news station's helicopter," Hannibal said, "Stone can't say anything about the press getting air shots for their 9 o' clock broadcast."

The look on the Lieutenant's face was not a smile in any way even though the corners of his mouth were turned up. "I have a feeling I'm _really_ not gonna like this one."

Hannibal noticed the plane was unusually quiet and looked over to where Murdock was asleep and asked B.A., "He alright?"

"I think so," B.A. answered, "Just being himself, _annoying_."

"Hey Hannibal," Face said, "How'd you know that liniment would knock him back?"

"I didn't," he answered, "But I know that Murdock has a habit of not doing what he's expected to, it might be engrained in him after so long so even unconscious he might resist our efforts to revive him, so I figured if he wasn't responding to the CPR then it might just be worth a shot to try it, he couldn't have anticipated that."

"What if it hadn't worked?" Face asked.

"Last resort," Hannibal snapped open his first aid kit and took out a vial and syringe, "Two shots of adrenaline in the chest. Doctors use it on OD cases who fail to respond to all other attempts to revive them, if we'd had to I would've used it on Murdock too and hoped for the same results."

Face didn't like to think of that and said, "Good thing the liniment worked."

Hannibal nodded and said, "Alright, I'll take the first watch, then in two hours, Face, you take over, and then you relieve him, B.A. And then tomorrow, we're going to find out how to crack that place wide open."

"Hannibal," B.A. said, "I want these suckers, I _really_ want 'em now."

"We all do, B.A.," Hannibal nodded in agreement, "And we're going to get them, just be patient."

"Don't look at me," he said, "Murdock's the patient."

Hannibal laughed and watched as B.A. sat down in the seat next to Murdock and absentmindedly patted the pilot's head as he slept. He turned and saw that Face had also stretched out in one of the seats and was already dead to the world. Hannibal turned back to the others and chuckled to himself as he saw that B.A. had also fallen asleep and had his head down and his hand still resting on the top of Murdock's head. Hannibal debated with himself over moving the Sergeant's hand but decided it was fine where it was, they'd only have a problem if B.A. dreamt he was squeezing watermelons. Murdock was already dead to the world, Hannibal checked just to make sure everything was alright; yep, heart beating, pulse beating, breath blowing on him as the pilot exhaled, so long as he was alive Hannibal didn't care _how_ he slept.

He got up and walked down the aisle out to the hatch and sat down by it, keeping an eye out and an ear open for anybody wandering through the area that night. All was quiet. He chuckled to himself, in the back of his mind he could hear the words to 'Silent Night' coming through. _All is calm, all is bright_. Well, almost right for both counts; it _was_ quiet out here now that the commotion had died down for the night, and there was just enough light from the moon that he could make out their surroundings. He'd be able to see anyone coming their way, but he'd hear them long before that, and if anyone _did_ come, he thought as he clutched his gun to his side, he'd be ready for them.

Two hours passed, he never moved, a few times he realized he'd closed his eyes and his head drooped down, but he never lost more than a few seconds during his watch. Two hours passed and nobody ever came.

* * *

The next morning, Murdock was fiddling with a tiny portable TV set he'd brought with him while they were waiting for Face to get back with their breakfast. Hannibal had examined him again to make sure they hadn't overlooked any injuries he sustained during the attack last night, found none and cleaned the pre-existing ones again.

"You gave us quite a scare last night, Captain," Hannibal told him.

"I didn't mean to, Colonel," he replied.

"I know you didn't," Hannibal said, "But we were really worried when we found you."

Murdock nodded glumly. "I don't know _which_ of the house goons did it, but if it's all the same to you, Colonel, I'd like a chance to kick the stuffing out of all of them once for good measure."

Hannibal nodded understandingly, "I think we'll all take a turn with that when this whole thing's over."

"I have an idea," Murdock said as he snapped his TV off, "You remember how in school when you did something wrong and the teachers made you write it 100 times on the blackboard?"

"So?" Hannibal asked.

"Well I say when we round up the whole mess of em, we string them up, and each take a big club, and piñata them a few hundred times and give a reason for each one." He mimicked beating one of the men with a bat and said, "Whack! This is the Breckenridge girl, whack! This is for the Thomas girl, whack! This is for the Thomas boy, whack! This is for putting me in a position to breathe in that nasty liniment, whack! Whack! Whack!"

Hannibal chuckled and nodded, "It could work."

"I'm back!" Face called as he stepped up into the plane with a paper bag in hand which he handed to Murdock.

Murdock looked in the bag and saw some donuts and sandwiches, and turned up his nose, "No coffee?"

"Sorry, Murdock," Face shrugged, "I had to hurry over to the news station and get them to give us the okay on taking their helicopter up later."

"How did that go?" Hannibal asked.

"Well we've got it," Face said, "Now I just hope we manage to find something with it."

"Oh we will," Hannibal told him.

"How can you be sure?" Face asked.

"No clouds out," Murdock said, "On a clear day you can see forever and that includes straight _down_."

* * *

After breakfast, Murdock and Face were flying high over the treetops keeping an eye out for anything suspicious down in Stone's gated yard. Face was half in and half out of his seat in the cockpit with the radio in one hand and a camera in the other incase he missed anything, on replay the video wouldn't.

"I'm not seeing anything yet, Hannibal," Face said into the microphone, "Oh…wait a minute."

"What is it?" Hannibal asked.

"I'm not sure," Face squinted to get a better look, "I think I see a garden down there."

"Face!"

"A what?" Murdock asked.

"No, Hannibal, I mean there's a large piece of ground where the dirt has been dug up and replaced, and it looks like it's been turned over recently, _like_ a garden."

"_Or_ a grave," Murdock said.

"The question is who did it?" Hannibal asked.

"Well it's all uneven and choppy," Face said, "So it wasn't done with any machine, it had to all be done by hand."

"The kids?" Murdock asked.

"Probably," Face said, "Funny, this guy Stone doesn't strike me as the type who'd have a garden, so what's he having them dig one for?"

"Face," Hannibal said, "Take a look at the house, how many rooms would you estimate there are to the mansion?"

"Uh…" Face tried to count the windows as a basis and said, "I don't know, at least 30."

"That's a lot of rooms, and they all need to be cleaned on a regular basis," Hannibal replied over the radio.

"Watcha thinking, Colonel?" Murdock yelled into the microphone from his side of the cockpit.

"Assuming Stone is selling these kids as house servants, he would have to know just how long and hard they can work when they're forced to," Hannibal said, "I think he's using them for a trial run in his house to find out how much it takes to break them and then having his prospective clients come and see which one they want."

"But how're they moving them out?" Face asked.

"That's one question," Murdock said, "Another is _how_ are _we_ going to get them out?"

"Wait a minute," Face lowered the radio and told the pilot, "Double back around, I think I saw something."

Murdock got the chopper going in the opposite direction and Face adjusted the zoom on the camera and said, "Oh no."

"What is it?"

He picked up the microphone and said, "You were right, Hannibal, they've got the kids here…I see maybe 20 of them being brought out into the yard."

"Find out what they're doing and then get back here," Hannibal said.

"Now we've got to figure out how we're going to actually get _in_ there," Face told Murdock.

Murdock took the radio from Face and said, "Colonel, I have a suggestion on how we get inside the yard."

"I'm all ears, Captain," Hannibal said.

"Well you know that portable TV set I brought in my bag?" Murdock asked, "I was going through the channels this morning when we were waiting for Face to get back with breakfast and one station had an old episode of M*A*S*H on…"

* * *

"Murdock, you are a genius," Hannibal said as he adjusted the parachute he was wearing over his red Santa suit, then adjusted his beard.

"You look great, Colonel, just like the genuine article," Murdock said.

"Well, it only needs to work for a couple of minutes," Hannibal picked up the radio and said, "Alright, Face, I'm going to be bailing out in a couple of minutes, when Murdock gives you the signal, tell B.A. to move in, we'll be waiting for you."

"Alright, Hannibal," Face replied, "We'll be waiting."

Hannibal looked down below and saw they were quickly approaching the intended destination. He tossed his big red bag out first, and then got ready for the jump.

"Good luck, Colonel," Murdock saluted him.

"I'll be seeing you soon, Murdock," Hannibal replied, and then leapt out.

When the parachute opened it was smooth sailing down to the ground and Hannibal could see a lot of people down below who were not expecting him looking up at him.

"Ho ho," he lowly chuckled to himself.


	14. Chapter 14

Looking further out over the grounds Hannibal saw the kids that Face had mentioned, and he was right, there were about a dozen of them with gardening tools working in the large patch of overturned dirt off on the other side of the property. A sudden gust of wind blew him off to the side a bit and he made a slightly rougher landing than he anticipated, but he made it on his feet and immediately started pulling off his parachute.

Two of the guards came up with their guns drawn and demanded to know, "Who the hell are you?"

Hannibal stood there with his hands on his sides and his feet spread out as far as his shoulders, and around the large shaggy beard he wore he managed to get out a simple answer, "I'm Santa Claus. The reindeer are sick this year so I've been practicing skydiving to make my deliveries."

He turned and saw the children had stopped toiling in the garden and were looking at this new intruder very curiously. They knew that he wasn't someone who was supposed to be there but they didn't know what it meant or what was going to happen next.

"My elf must've had the right address after all," Hannibal said, "Isn't this the St. Marie's Orphanage?" He looked to the kids and said with a smile, "Hello kiddies, would you like to go for a ride with Santa Claus?"

"No, it ain't," one of the guards bluntly said as he raised his gun, "But it's gonna be a funeral home if you don't get out of here."

"Oh now that's not a nice thing to do," Hannibal tsk-tsked him, "You wouldn't want to be naughty when Santa brought a present for you," he untied the knot on his sack and opened it up.

He heard a door slam shut and he saw another man coming towards him. At first glance the man vaguely reminded Hannibal of Martin James, he looked like the crazed self proclaimed prophet, he even wore the same kind of dark sunglasses. Well this time _he_ was going to be the one issuing the obstacle run.

"What the hell's going on around here?" the man demanded to know, and looked ready to rip somebody's head off.

"Are you Liam Stone?" Hannibal asked.

"Yes, and who the hell are you?" he replied.

Hannibal ignored the question and said as he yanked off his beard, "Oh good, I was looking for you, you're on my list, and I wanted to make sure you got exactly what was coming to you."

Before anybody could make a move, Hannibal pulled a machine gun out and opened fire, the rounds went off several inches over the guards' heads but all the same it had them and their boss ducking for cover.

"The naughty list that is," Hannibal added, and before they could get a round off, he turned and took out the alarm system over the tool shed, and then raised his aim higher and shot down the power lines connected to the roof of the shed, severing the gate's electrical source, rendering the wiring on the fence completely useless except to prick people.

At that time, Hannibal could see the helicopter coming back and coming down for a landing. That also sent everybody ducking for cover, including the children. The chopper came down and as soon as the skids touched down, Murdock bailed out of the cockpit and came to Hannibal's aid firing back at the guards with an Uzi.

"Everything alright, Colonel?" Murdock yelled over the firing.

"So far so good, get the gate!" Hannibal told him as he took over distracting the gunmen.

Murdock took off running around to the front, undid the locks on the front gate doors and threw them open, and immediately scurried back as he saw the old army bus Face had managed to scam them barreling up the road at 60 miles an hour.

"Incoming, Colonel!" Murdock called.

The gate's doors had been left open but when the bus came through it half ripped them both off of their hinges.

"Watch it, B.A.!" Face said as he just avoided slamming his head into the dashboard, "This isn't the demolition derby, and this is too big to be playing bumper cars."

"Then what's left?" B.A. asked cynically.

"Technically this is still California," Face said, "Let's play Pedestrian Polo."

That brought a scary looking grin to the Sergeant's face as he pressed the accelerator to the floor and replied, "Yeah!"

If two trigger happy intruders with automatic weapons hadn't been enough to send Stone and his men running like a bunch of wild horses, a 14 ton bus coasting towards them at full speed did. Murdock had left his post covering Hannibal and went to round up the children to make sure none of them ran in the way of the bus in all the confusion as it swerved all over the land behind the house. Face put down one of the windows on the right side of the bus and stuck the barrel of his gun out and likewise opened fire at the men just to make sure they didn't get any funny ideas. Between he and Hannibal, they put plenty of bullets in the sheds, the house, and the trees, but that was about the extent of it.

Hannibal waved his arm high so B.A. could see it and he yelled to the driver, "Alright, B.A., kill it!"

B.A. let up on the gas and swerved to the side once more so he had room to work while the bus came to a gradual halt.

"Not bad, B.A.," Face said, "But I wouldn't recommend you taking your daycare class on a field trip."

"Shut up, Face," B.A. said as he stopped the bus, "Let's go get them."

"I told you boys you didn't want to be naughty," Hannibal said as he held his machine gun on Stone and his guards, all of whom had their hands high up in the air, "It's not nice to mess with Santa," he nodded his head to the group of terrified children, "Or little kids. And speaking of which, Stone, you're going to take us on a tour of your house and we're going to find all the other children you're keeping in this million dollar sweatshop of yours, and _then_ you're going to show us all your paperwork showing who your clients are you've sold the others to, and how much you got for each child, and _where_ they went, and then you're going to be _very_ cooperative with the proper authorities so they can track down those other kids and return them to their parents, you got me?"

"And if I refuse?" Stone dared him.

Hannibal gave one of his less pleasant grins and said, "Then you just remember, I see you when you're sleeping, I know when you're awake, I know where you always are and I'll have no problem tracking you down and exacting on you the torture techniques I learned in Ho Chi Minh's death camp…you won't last 10 minutes, I promise you that."

"Colonel!" Murdock came up with three kids and said, "I got the ones we originally came for."

He looked and saw the children. They look like they hadn't been fed since they were kidnapped, and also looked like they hadn't slept in several days, they had dark circles under their wide eyes and they looked like they didn't know what to do anymore or who to trust.

"Allison, Danny, and Chloe, right?" Hannibal said, "Don't worry, we're the good guys, we've come to take you back home to your mothers."

The kids screamed and howled in delight, this little nugget of information restoring some of the life into them after God knew what had been inflicted upon them during their stay here.

Chloe looked past Hannibal to the two men getting off the bus and shied back, asking timidly, "Who are they?"

Hannibal turned back to see what she was looking at and said with a chuckle, "Oh them? Those are Santa's helpers. See he has a rule, he can't deliver his presents to all the good little children until they're back at their own homes, so we're going to load everybody up on the bus and take _all_ of you back to your parents."

The rest of the children also yelped in excitement when they heard this revelation.

"But first," Hannibal told them, "We're going to go inside and get the others."

* * *

It was a long process. Once inside the house they found many more children and had Murdock and Face count them all and take all their names and ask the kids where they lived; they wound up with close to 50 children, and three quarters of them were all girls, most of the kids were between the ages of seven and twelve, and most of them had all been snatched up in the last two weeks from all over the state. Hannibal had noticed that in addition to being scared out of their little minds, they all looked half starved, and after asking a few of the kids, found out that they'd all been fed nothing but cornbread, celery and some powdered milk since they arrived. He mentioned that with as much money as Stone had, the refrigerator in the kitchen was sure to be full of plenty of real food and he put Murdock in charge of feeding them while he and Face went through Stone's paperwork, and B.A. tied up Stone and the guards and made sure they didn't get loose.

The office where all the records were kept was right next to the kitchen and Hannibal spent a couple minutes watching from the crack in the door. While kids were usually B.A.'s area of expertise, they all took very quickly to Murdock; he was tall but he wasn't intimidating and could and did hunch down whenever he found a particularly bashful child who better cooperated with someone closer to their own size. And with his own childlike qualities and his easygoing and fun personality he was able to gain the trust of even the most hardened of the kids because they knew he was safe. Hannibal felt his heart swell with pride, he knew that Murdock would be an exceptional father someday, and he also knew that were it possible, the Captain would take every one of those children home with him and care for them as if they were his own. He was capable of loving almost anybody and it was a process that usually took very little time; he could be fully devoted to someone in as little as 10 seconds depending on the person. Hannibal returned his attention to the matter at hand which was getting all of Stone's records, but he was able to hear the commotion in the kitchen as Murdock talked to the kids and sang with the smaller ones and enlisted the help of the older ones to make sure everybody got fed.

After about an hour, Murdock entered the office and Hannibal asked, "How's it going?"

"I think they're finally full," he answered, "About cleaned out the whole damn fridge to do it…Hannibal, may I have permission to drop a piano on this guy's head before we turn him over to the police?"

"Any particular reason, Captain, or just for the fun of it?" Hannibal asked.

"Bastard starved those kids on celery and powder milk while he's got $3000 worth of caviar in the house," Murdock explained, "The kids didn't like it, so I packed the rest of it in your bag to take as part of our payment since we're doing this pro bono."

Hannibal was still scanning over all the paperwork so while he'd heard Murdock and his own blood was boiling at the thought, he maintained a somewhat nonchalant stance as he replied, "Hmmm, that was thoughtful of you. What else did he have on hand?"

"Oh just about everything," Murdock said, "We ran out of bread so they each only got half a sandwich folded over, after that they ate all the fruit in the crisper, a gallon jar of pickles, three dozen eggs, they drank down every last drop of the real milk and also every can of soda pop including the ones that ain't got cold yet, they swallowed every last bit of meat that was thawed, I found some tuna fish in the cupboard so they had tuna salad on crackers, fortunately there were plenty of those. But if they kept this up any longer, we'd have to send out for pizza."

"We could afford it," Hannibal said, and picked up a small brown envelope and tossed it to Murdock, "We'll be taking that too for our payment."

Murdock opened the envelope and thumbed through it and found $25,000 in it.

"There's plenty more in this house that the cops will be able to put the dots together," Hannibal said.

"Those women said that the cops wouldn't help them though," Murdock said.

"No, but there's enough proof here to warrant standing Stone up against the wall and riddling him with bullets, whether the cops like it or not this has just become a very high profile case and they'll _have_ to do their jobs right if they want to keep them at all."

Murdock raised his hand and asked, "What makes it high profile now, Colonel?"

Hannibal smirked at him and said, "You and Face are going to call up the local news stations and tell them all about it, that's what. Then we're going to get the kids loaded up and get them back to their parents."

"Uh," Murdock raised his hand again and asked, "How?"

"Well we've got all their names," Hannibal said, "We'll run them against the missing child posters that have been issued in the last couple of weeks and find out how to contact their parents to pick them up. Of course since the police _are_ going to be brought into this it only makes sense we take them to a police station and let them help sort it all out, after all they're not getting Christmas off."

"It's going to be a long drive back home, Colonel," Murdock said.

"I know it will, fortunately I know a few shortcuts that ought to shave a couple hours off the trip," Hannibal told him, "What we're going to do is pick one precinct back in L.A., call the news stations and tell them to put an announcement on all the TV channels telling all the parents of missing children to come down there and see if their children are among the ones we found."

"Sounds like a good plan, Hannibal," Murdock nodded, "And I love it when a good plan comes together."

"Very funny, Murdock," Hannibal teasingly scowled at him.

"Lord knows we've had a lot of bad ones come together over the years," Murdock replied, "About time we had a good one."

Murdock left the office and went to the corner of the dining room where B.A. had the men tied up by the wrists and suspended by the ceiling.

"Nice work, big guy," Murdock said, "Just too bad this ain't over the lion pit at the zoo at feeding time."

"You don't _really_ think you're going to get away with this, do you?" Stone asked defiantly.

Murdock got in his face and said firmly, "Never underestimate the potential of a crazy person. In fact you…" Murdock realized they had a guest watching them. One of the 7 year old girls had wandered into the room and looked at the sight before her curiously. Murdock smiled at her, grabbed her hands and placed them on her ears and turned her around while he screamed and yelled and cursed at the men doing a fine imitation of cow carcasses in the back of a butcher shop. The girl couldn't make out the words but she was almost laughing because his ranting was high pitched and sounded like a gerbil on helium. She took her hands off her ears in time to hear him as he summed it up, in midsentence, "…Or I'll bop you in the nose and tie your ears in a bow for Christmas!"

* * *

It took a long time to get everything tended to, but finally they had the kids loaded on the bus, the paperwork in hand, and the bad guys tied up and left waiting for the police to come and arrest them. Some of the children were still leery of these four men who had come to 'rescue' them but with a little work they managed to get the kids to trust them and they willingly got on the bus. The first place they went was back to the airplane to unload all of their supplies to take back with them. Face had already made the dreaded phone call to the airport about where they could find their missing plane in more or less the same condition it had left in. After that it was the long winding road back to Los Angeles. The kids were excited to be going home and even though they were told to stay in their seats, every so often a couple would get up and run around and Murdock or Hannibal or Face had to snatch them back.

After the first hour the kids started to get listless so Murdock kept them occupied by going around from seat to seat and getting them to sing Christmas carols, Face leaned over to Hannibal in the seat in front of him and said, "Any other time of the year I'd be the first one to shut him up."

"Second," Hannibal pointed to B.A. up front, "But because it's Christmas and it _is_ important, we'll let him have his fun, and them too."

"Amen to that," Face said as he settled back into his seat.

Hannibal caught a rambunctious seven year old girl as she came running past him and he put her on his lap and said, "Whoa sweetie, you've got to sit still until the bus stops."

He blinked and looked at her again, he'd seen this little girl somewhere before. Ah yes, he remembered, a year back when he did the Universal Studios tour as the Aquamaniac while waiting on a client, walking around in that rubber suit getting his picture taken with little kids. This little girl had been there with her brother, he tried kicking the monster and she tried using his tail for a jump rope. After they had their picture taken she had suddenly turned over and told the creature she wanted to stay with him forever. He'd managed to talk her out of that and sent her back to her mother, yes Hannibal was certain, this was that same little girl. Unbelievable.

His attention was brought back to the here and now by the sight of Murdock walking up and down the rows of seats passing out candy canes and suckers to the kids. "Oh Captain!"

"You'll have to wait your turn, Hannibal," Murdock said.

"No thanks, it's probably the same flavor as last year," he jokingly replied as he stood up, "What're you doing?"

"Well I said it's a long ride back to L.A., I figured the kids could use something to nibble on, and besides there wasn't any food left at the house to take once we cleaned them out."

"So noted," Hannibal nodded, "Good thinking, Murdock."

Murdock nodded also and said, "Boy, I can't wait to get back and tell Jean all about this one…she's not going to believe it."

"I hardly believe it myself and I was there," Hannibal said, "This mission was definitely one for the books."

"Uh huh," Murdock replied, and snagged a 12-year-old boy that tried to run past him, "Now sit down and don't get up until the big angry mudsucker in the driver's seat stops the bus."

* * *

Nothing could make the ride back to town feel any shorter than it was, along the way every member of the A-team found out many details about the lives of the children they rescued, as well as their parents and their siblings back home. It helped them track down the neighborhoods where a lot of them lived, but it was still decided to go with Hannibal's original plan and drop them all off with the police since cracking the slave trade open _was_ a matter for the police, as well as finding the rest of the missing children. And Hannibal reminded the others, also when they got home they had to pay a visit to a custody judge, a court reporter, and Eliza's ex-husband.

When they were a couple miles away from Los Angeles, they stopped long enough to phone the news stations and let them know what was going on, and also to phone the police station so they also knew what was going on, and who was responsible, and where who were so they could be arrested, and explained that all the proof they needed to shut Stone away was coming with them. This was going to be one hell of a welcome home ceremony for all the kids. Hannibal had changed back into his Santa suit, beard and all, so nobody would be able to recognize him when he went in. Of course that still left the matter of somebody maybe recognizing Face or B.A., but Hannibal had a solution for that. They'd park the bus a few blocks down from where the media circus would be and he'd get off with all the kids and walk them up to the precinct and hand them over to their parents. After that he'd go one way and they'd go another, ditch the bus, and then meet up later on and tend to the rest of their business for the night.

It was amazing how in a few short hours a child could latch onto somebody they hadn't known before. One was hard enough to say goodbye to, but 50 of them was about impossible. Though all the kids were thrilled to be going home, they hated saying goodbye to their new friends and several had to be pulled off of them. Murdock had been left embarrassed to death and at a momentary loss for words when one of the 12-year-old girls said she wanted to marry him, and he had to gently break the news that he was involved with someone else already. And Hannibal had had his own hands full particularly with the girl who had known him as the Aquamaniac; she hadn't said anything to imply she knew who he was, but she had refused to leave his side during the whole ride back and she was reluctant to leave him now as well.

Though it was difficult, one by one they managed to get the kids ready to go home, one by one they got the kids off the bus and lined up behind Hannibal who looked like a salvation army Santa Claus, and they marched off into the chilly night to meet their parents at the police station. Media circus had been an understatement, it was a stampede, the whole block was full of reporters, cameramen, people shoving microphones into the children's faces as they marched past them and into the front doors of the station. Hannibal had stopped for a minute to speak with the reporters, revealing absolutely nothing about how he rescued the children and got them back, saying only that Santa could work miracles in the strangest ways. Inside the station he went off to a private room with a couple of officers and a couple of men who had been called in from the FBI. Apparently the children Stone had already sold had been shipped overseas to their new 'owners' and it was going to take some time to get them back. However, after sorting through the paperwork Hannibal gave them, the men concluded that the records matched 50 cases they were in the process of solving, and estimated that those children would be returned to their families within the next few days.

"It's going to be a Merry Christmas for a lot of families," Hannibal commented, and resuming his Santa character he added in a gruffer voice, "Well you gentlemen will have to excuse me, I've got to get back to the North Pole, the reindeer games are running late and there's an elf work union debate going on that needs my tending to, ho ho ho and Merry Christmas, gentlemen."

He went back out into the squad room where the children were being reunited with their parents, it was a tearful and joyous event, and Hannibal immediately spotted the two women who hired them. They came up to him and threw their arms around him and sobbed in relief at having their children back.

"Thank you, Mr. Smith," Angela whispered, "You don't know how much we appreciate this."

"Oh I can take a guess," he replied, and turning to Eliza he added, "And if you and your lovely daughter will excuse me, Santa has one more visit to pay, to one particular naughty boy, you of course have his address?"

Eliza nodded and with a little sleight of hand, shoved a piece of paper with her ex's address into his coat pocket. Hannibal said one more goodbye to all the kids and excused himself to get back to his sleigh, and wished them all a happy holiday.

Losing the press hadn't been too hard, after a few reporters dogged him for several blocks, he turned a corner down a dark alley and quickly disappeared before anybody could spot him. He started peeling off his costume and stuffed it all into a galvanized garbage can and went off to find the others. He found them in an old run down garage that had gone out of business several years ago.

"How'd it go?" Face asked.

"Worked like a charm," he answered, "Who would ever make trouble for Santa Claus?"

"Did the parents come and get the kids?" Murdock asked.

"Yeah they're still in the process of sorting through everyone," Hannibal said, "I'm sure before the night's over they'll have everything straightened out."

"Cute kids," Murdock commented.

"Which reminds me," Face said, "What are they feeding kids these days? I mean what qualifies as brain food?"

Hannibal shrugged and said, "Beats me, Face, why?"

"During the drive back I had one six-year-old girl come up to me and say I look like a womanizer," he said.

Murdock laughed and replied, "Smart kid."

"Okay, okay," Hannibal got their attention and reminded them, "The job's not over yet. Eliza gave me the address of her ex, and the names of the judge and the court reporter who botched her custody hearing. I say it's time we go pay them a visit."

"I'll get the tar and feathers," Murdock volunteered.

* * *

The second plan had been a much simpler one. Under the cover of darkness, the A-Team had cut the power at Judge James Burnett's home as well as the home of soon to be retired court reporter Thom Gallagher, and at the home of Eliza's ex-husband, Mike Chambers. Once the power went out, four men in black ski masks barged in, ambushed the men, knocked them out, tied them up, dragged them out and one by one by one put them all together like a set of dominoes about to be knocked down.

"Well gentlemen," Hannibal said as he yanked his mask off, "If I had to guess, I'd wager that you three know each other, and by the looks of it I'd say pretty well too."

"Who are you and what do you want with us?" the judge asked.

"Well he certainly doesn't beat around the bush, does he?" Face asked as he removed his mask as well, followed by Murdock and B.A.

"Well it's all very simple, Judge," Hannibal said, "A few months ago you screwed up immensely on a custody hearing and awarded sole custody of an 8-year-old girl to this dirt bag," he pointed to Mike, "And either you or him or both you _and_ him got a hold of _this_ man," he pointed to Gallagher, "And told him to edit his stenography from that case, so upon appeal all damning testimony given by this man and his family would be removed, royally screwing up any chance the girl's mother had of regaining custody of her. Well we're very near Christmas, Judge, and Christmas is a time for righting wrongs, so what you're going to do is abort the custody order you granted, and return sole custody to the mother, one Ms. Eliza Breckenridge, with the court's apology, and with the back child support that her alleged father owes for time lost."

"You're crazy," Mike said, not giving the current situation the seriousness it deserved, "Did that old bat put you up to this?"

"Naw, _I'm_ the crazy bat," Murdock said, and to prove his point he flapped his arms and screeched in a high pitch, "Think if I bit you you'd break out in rabies?"

"If you gentlemen _don't_ want to cooperate, that's your business," Hannibal said, and turned around to the others and hollered, "B.A.!"

B.A. didn't get to break the bones in the three men's bodies but he did get a close second which was half an hour beating the living daylights out of all three men until they were all bloody and bruised and ready to surrender.

"You see, gentlemen," Hannibal said as he lit his cigar, "I knew we could come to an agreement. All it took was a bunch of rational adults putting their heads together."

"And through walls," Murdock added.

"And a word of warning," Hannibal told them, "If any of you gets the bright idea to bring the police into this once we're gone, they won't find us, but we _will_ find you again, and _next_ time we're going to get mean. The choice is yours, gentlemen."

* * *

"The perfect end to a perfect mission," Hannibal said over his cigar on the drive back to Jean's house.

"I don't know about you guys," Face said, "But I'm ready to crawl into bed and sleep like the dead."

"Speak for yourself, Face," Murdock replied, "Jean's going to want to know all the gory details and I'm going to be only too happy to give them to her."

"Well," Hannibal said as he looked up the block, "It sure is great to be home again, even if it's only home away from home."

B.A. pulled the van up into the driveway of Jean's house and everybody got out. But as they did, Murdock noticed something weird, "Hey Hannibal, the lights are out."

"Well it's late," Face said, "Maybe she went to bed already."

Murdock had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, "I don't know."

He went up the stairs and the others followed behind him and they all saw that the door was standing open. They went in with their guns drawn, threw on the lights and called out for Jean while they checked all the rooms.

"Jean!" Hannibal called, "Come out come out wherever you are, this isn't funny!"

"Hannibal!" Face yelled from the kitchen.

Hannibal ran in and saw bloodstains on the floor leading over to the back stairs. They ran up to the second floor and continued calling for Jean as they went in the rooms to look for her. One of the first rooms they checked was Murdock's game room, where the lights had been left on and the door was open.

"Oh my God," Murdock said.

Something had definitely happened in this room. Holes had been punched into the walls, several of the large game consoles had been unplugged and moved around the room as if to provide an obstacle or a block, bloodstains were scattered all over the floor, B.A.'s new toolbox that Murdock had gotten him for Christmas was open in the middle of the floor and near it was one of the large new wrenches, the top half also covered in blood. And over in the corner of the room, the jukebox stood broken, the glass front shattered and the interior letting out a slow trail of smoke, a hint of the oh-too-familiar-for-veterans scent of burning flesh filling the air.

Murdock buried his face in his hands and asked helplessly, "What happened here?"

"Two things we know for certain," Hannibal said, and pointed first to the smoking jukebox and then to the wrench, "Somebody got electrocuted, and somebody got their brains beat out of them, and I'm guessing that both of them were Jean's doing, otherwise she'd still be here."

"But where is she now?" Face asked.

"I don't know," Hannibal said, dreading what the answer might be.

Murdock left the room as the other three tried to piece together what must've happened while they were gone, and a moment later they heard Murdock let out a loud, long, distressed scream, and they ran down the hall to see what it was. They ran into Hannibal's room where they found Murdock collapsed on the floor, and all three of them felt their hearts drop in their stomachs and their backs impaled with a thousand pins and needles when they saw what had upset Murdock. On the wall over Hannibal's bed were bloody hand smudges that had hastily scrawled out a note in only two letters:

VC


	15. Chapter 15

_Click_.

Jean looked through the corners of her eyes at the gun aimed at her head and watched as the man who held it cocked the hammer back and pulled the trigger again.

_Click_.

Apparently this was found by the three Vietnamese kidnappers to be very funny; the men who surrounded her in the room were all laughing their heads off. The trigger man said a bunch of stuff in Vietnamese and she didn't have one clue what he was saying, another one spoke a little more English and asked while he laughed, "You don't scare easy, do you lady?"

Jean did her best to maintain a bored expression, which wasn't hard considering she'd had about four hours of these stunts being pulled. She hadn't been told who any of them were, so left to her own devices she'd come up with her own names for the Viet-Cong stooges; between the A-Team and her own uncle who had served in Vietnam, she had learned some of the names used in that country, though she couldn't get the pronunciations right to save her life, not that it mattered here anyway. They talked amongst themselves in their native tongue, which was just a bunch of gibberish to her, so she spat gibberish right back at them, figuring in some way she was leveling the playing field; and it had been in the midst of that she decided what to call these morons.

The fat one who had the gun she had named Than, though to the best of her knowledge all people who had actually had that name in Vietnam were all extinct. The one in front of her who had been interrogating her before the trigger was pulled was a skinny man who had a goofy look on his face every time they tried to scare her, and she had identified him as Chung, and the third one who sat off to the side and kept a straight face but was always laughing, she'd decided he would be called Ha, though the way she pronounced it always started with a little phlegm first. She only addressed them by these names when she spoke directly to them, and what they thought of it, only they knew, but she knew it didn't matter much what they thought because their boss would be in soon to deal with her again.

The boss. She didn't know his name either, and as far as she knew it wasn't a Vietnamese name but so she'd have something to call him other than 'hey you!' when he entered the room, she had christened him as Phung. Was it even a real word? Did it have any meaning? How the hell should she know? And what the hell did it matter now?

The door opened and in stepped the boss, the self proclaimed leader of this Viet-Cong 3 ring circus. Jean pretended to be relieved by his presence.

"Hey Phung," she said, and nodded towards Than, "Where do you get your weapons from, eh? Either Tiny here can't figure out how to load his pistol, or somebody stole his firing pin, why don't you get him something that works?"

"You disappoint me, miss," he said to her.

"You disappoint me too," Jean said, "If you're trying to kill me you're doing a poor job of it."

They'd been dancing in this same circle for four hours, and so far she had a split lip, a pulsating cheek, and a dozen other assorted minor injuries to show for it.

"You mistake me, miss," Phung replied and shook his head solemnly, "I do not wish to see you dead."

"Not now, _no_," Jean said, "That's not your style to kill someone right away." She nodded her head towards Than and said, "Though I believe your gorillas can appreciate the sentiment. Ol' Junior here had an inkling to reenact Nguyễn Văn Lém's final farewell." She knew she'd said it wrong but she didn't care, they still got the message. "Perhaps you ought to tell your guy that the right way to play Russian roulette is with all six chambers full, and to make sure it works always try it on yourself first."

Phung came up to her and glared down at her and said, "You a stubborn woman."

"Well I'm no Apache," she replied, "But I do alright."

Four hours of this, her throat was dry as a bone, she licked her split lip and commented, "I'd ask for something to drink, except I'm not a fan of your pineappled Coca-Cola cans."

She smiled when she saw his eyes widen slightly at that remark.

"Oh yes, Phung," she said, "You see we Americans _do_ learn from history: German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Croatian…you see we learn from the best so we don't need our own plans for destruction, we take yours and do just fine with them. So I know all about you and how you worked, you boys liked to play with spikes, spike everything: coke cans, trap doors, bamboo, boards that swing in open doorways, you love impaling people for some reason. By any chance do you happen to have some kind of crucifixion complex? How about you, you up on your world history? No doubt you learned something about the Nazis, how about the Ustasha, you know them?" She cackled as an evil grin came over her face and said, "You probably would've gotten along well with them, I can't agree with what they did but I can admire how they did it…in fact, if I had it my way right about now I'd like to bash your brains out with a sledgehammer myself."

There was an awkward pause for a few seconds as he glared at her, then he started to laugh as if she'd told a funny joke, and then out of nowhere he struck her across the face hard enough to knock her on the floor. She hardly made a sound, just licked her split lip and said as she got back up, "Eh, you can do better than that, my old man used to hit me harder than that."

"Save it miss, I saw "The Wild One"," Phung told her.

"Oh yeah? I saw it once, long time ago, not my favorite movie but I never was big on Brando, all that talk about contenders, strictly overrated…now in my opinion his best line was when he said 'You think you're God Almighty but you know what you are? A cheap, lousy, dirty, stinking mug, and I'm _glad_ what I done to you'." She smiled at him like a shark about to bite and said, "And I'll be glad what I do to you too."

He got in her face and asked, "What makes the A-Team worth having to go through all of this? Why are they so important?"

"I ought to ask you the same thing," Jean said, "It's not so weird why a Los Angeles resident would know of them since they come from the L.A. underground, but _why_ would a Cong soldier who they escaped from the clutches of, travel 8,000 miles 15 years after the fact to hunt them down? What makes them so important to you? You've come for revenge of some kind but you're not going to get it because you're never going to find them."

Phung turned to the others and said only, "Take her back."

"Here we go again," Jean said as Ha and Chung grabbed her and hauled her off, "Back to the cooler!" As she was dragged towards the door she hollered back, "Don't think it ain't been fun, Phung, but I gotta go now."

The cooler was just exactly that; a large walk-in freezer with no way to open the door from the inside. As far as Jean could tell, the building they were in now had once been a butcher shop, that would certainly explain the freezer. As she was hauled off towards her icy prison, she caught a glimpse at the freezer's thermostat and saw the red had dropped again, she couldn't see where but it looked somewhere between 35 and 30 now. The large metal door was opened and she was tossed up against the opposite wall and locked in once again.

Jean went over towards the door and listened, and when she heard them leave she went back to the center of the freezer. Well, she'd just bought herself another couple of hours in the cooler, at least it was a couple hours away from them, that would give her some time to think up some new remarks when they resumed interrogating her.

For the last two hours it had been this way, they tried to get answers out of her, she deflected their questions with her own humorous responses, they'd all take a turn beating her, and then off they'd haul her to the freezer again. In the beginning it hadn't been so bad, maybe 50 degrees or so; she had to laugh, those damn gorillas actually thought they could freeze her into talking. They must've thought she was born and bred in California, _never_ underestimate a person who had spent 24 winters on the east coast. That, combined with her own hot bloodedness had bought her the first hour in only slight discomfort. The next one had been harder, first they'd taken her back out where it was warm for a few minutes, then when they put her back in they turned the temperature down. And now they'd turned it down again and they would turn it down a little more and a little more every time she refused to tell them where the A-Team was. And they'd turn it down all the way until she was a frozen corpse. Coming from a colder climate, Jean thought she knew more about hypothermia than most people who lived out here; and she tried to remember everything she'd ever learned about it. The two most important things she knew, she had to keep moving, and as long as her mind was working and she was lucid and could think coherently, then she'd be alright. All she had to do was last another two hours and then she could come up with a plan.

How and why had this whole thing started? Well, it was a long and twisted and sordid story, she'd never be able to explain it to anyone and have it make sense. She'd found out the hard way tonight that Face hadn't been entirely crazy when he tried choking her in her sleep. His nightmares were valid, the Viet-Cong was still out there, maybe not exactly, but the men who had served in it and survived, a lot of them were still alive, and clearly some of them _still_ remembered the A-Team and had a grudge with them. Enough of one that they would travel 8000 miles and search all over L.A. for them, just waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Of course Jean didn't have to ask _what_ did the A-Team _ever_ do to the VC, but the question was which thing they did had brought the guerillas to this? She remembered Hannibal mentioning some friends down in China Town who had hired them to save a friend's daughter from the Viet-Cong several years ago, but could that be it? Or was it just revenge for them being able to escape from the prison camp? They didn't say _why_ they wanted the A-Team, only that they did, and she was going to tell them, or else.

Earlier that evening, she had heard the front door downstairs get kicked in, and what happened next had only taken a few minutes, but it felt like it had been an hour. A group of men that she could identify as being Vietnamese came charging up the stairs, screaming something that she couldn't understand. Her first instinct hadn't been to run, only to grab something to fight with, the first room she had access to was the arcade room. She couldn't even remember the whole fight that had taken place there, what she did remember was tossing open B.A.'s toolbox and taking out one of the largest wrenches and beating one of the men in the head with it. She hit him with it several times and his blood had gone everywhere, but he was still alive. Another one tried to grab Jean and she shoved him back, he lost his balance, his hands broke through the glass front of the jukebox and he must've touched the wires or something because electricity shot through his body, the lights shorted on and off, he was screaming like a banshee and when he finally dropped and the current died, smoke poured out from the broken screen. He too had survived. How, she didn't know, the only thing she could think of was next time she'd have to try something stronger, like dynamite.

In the midst of that confusion she had been able to slip out the door and she ran down the hall and into Hannibal's room. She had gone in to grab a gun but she saw her hands were bloody, no doubt from the man she's beaten senseless with the wrench. Subconsciously she must've known that she'd be leaving the house with them, so in the few seconds before they caught her, she used the blood to smear VC on the wall, knowing that whenever the A-Team got back, they'd know what it meant, though it wouldn't help them find her, she knew that. They wouldn't even be getting back until at least tomorrow, but if she had anything to say about it she would still be alive when that time came.

It hadn't been so bad at first, she'd been tossed in the back of a truck and shut in like a cow. She didn't know how long they had driven, but she knew that when they unloaded her, they were expecting that she had no idea where they were. Actually she had a rough idea, she'd been over this spot several times before with Murdock when he flew, it looked different from down on the ground but she still recognized it. Now if only she could contact somebody to tell them where she was…

But that hadn't been in the plans. She'd been marched into a room inside a dark building, and that had been where she had first met everyone. Altogether there were about 20 men who had belonged to the Viet-Cong facing her down like she was the lamb about to be made into the specialty of the house. She'd said nothing in the beginning, she didn't even bother with the name, rank and serial number bit the soldiers were trained to give in situations like this. She'd had names for all of them in the beginning: Le, Tran, Pham, Chu, Dopey, Sneezy, Doc, Grumpy, Moe, Larry, Curly, etc. Phung had been among the last to arrive, he'd also been the first to address her, saying simply, "You speak."

She didn't bother with a response, she wasn't even sure what the question was. Was he trying to say 'you talk first' or 'do you speak English?' or something like that. The questions were turned over to Pham who asked, "Where pilot?"

Murdock? What did they want with him of all people? Well, through a mixture of bad English and native Vietnamese Jean listened to them all and was able to piece together that they had been watching members of the A-Team for the last couple weeks. She looked around the room again and recognized Ha has being a man she had spotted at the grocery store when she was in there the other day with Murdock. She also took away from their conversation that they had started to follow Murdock and Face, but had lost them, so instead they turned their attention to her since she obviously knew them and knew where they were. Murdock and Face had both been right, the VC was still very much alive and now it had come to their own country.

She'd kept quiet as long as she could, eventually they made her talk, but they couldn't make her reveal their location. She'd tell them everything except what they wanted to know, what they needed to know. If she was going to die she might as well have a little fun at their expense first.

"Why am I here?" she asked, "What do you want?"

"You know A-Team," Phung said.

"Everybody knows about the A-Team," she answered, "They're in the newspapers all the time, they're like Superman."

"Not _of_ them, _know_ them," he replied, "You with their pilot."

"Pilot? Pilot?" Jean repeated, and shifted gears, "Pilate, he was the judge that threw Jesus over to the Romans."

He scowled at her and said firmly, "You not funny, lady."

She cocked her head to the side and said, "Well of course they can't all be gems but that's to be expected in this business, just look at the Marx Brothers."

He didn't get the joke and said again, "You not funny."

"I'm a riot," Jean said, "And I'm smart, smart enough to know that you're not as dumb as you're pretending to be. I'm sure that if situation called for it in a moment's notice you could turn face and recite the entire Declaration of Independence verbatim without any of that broken English you're tossing around."

Of course if that was the case, there wasn't any way he was going to reveal the truth, and Jean knew that. So for now, they'd continue putting on this act of being a bunch of dumb brutes.

"I thought your side of the world was supposed to be the smart side after all," Jean said, "Except you didn't get known for your brains, not _really_, sure it took some to put all those traps together, but you just got yourselves known for being a bloodthirsty murderous lot, something which I'm sure has not changed in time."

He glared at her and in two steps was on her and had his hand wrapped around her throat. Now she knew where Face had learned it from.

"You tell us where A-Team is or you face consequences," he told her.

Jean managed to pull his hand off of her and she said, "I doubt that very much, Phung. Now, I take it that you're the boss around here, you're the one overseeing the rest of these gorillas." She stopped and laughed, Cong, Kong, guerillas, gorillas, she'd been right, when you came down to it they were all just a bunch of apes. She laughed again at her private joke and kept it to herself as she told him, "I already electrocuted one of your boys on my music box, and I beat another's brains out with my monkey wrench, so you want to try something too, just go ahead, but you won't have long to enjoy it."

He squinted one eye and asked inquisitively, "Why do you say that?"

"I guess you didn't know," Jean said and she tapped her chest and explained, "Bad heart, had two holes blown into it a couple years back…doctors say anything sudden happens and it could just be BOOM!, lights out, so you want to try your torture techniques on me, go ahead, but I doubt I'll stick around long for the fun and games."

Apparently everybody's English was _very_ good because this seemed to have all of their attention. Jean added to Phung, "Now, I'm just the dumb kid from New York, but what is it that you and your people believe in? What are you, atheists?" Then as if the answer just hit her she added quickly, "No-no-no, no I know what it is, you guys are into that Buddhism and Confucianism and I believe the other is Taoism, all means nothing to me. Well in the western world our beliefs strongly involve ghosts. You see here in America we don't believe that the dead rest in peace, no matter what they put on those tombstones. The dead are angry and they come back, now there are many reasons _why_ they come back. The first and foremost reason, is murder, if they are murdered they come back for revenge. The second highest cause for ghosts, is suicide, they come back to complete a different form of unfinished business. Third is horrible accidents, see the way those work is the ghosts died so suddenly that they aren't aware they _are_ dead, they think they're still alive. And if I thought I was still alive, I might just be inclined to rip your head off and spit down you throat."

She had expected one of them to knock her on the floor when she said that but to her surprise they did not. They all glared at her as if they were trying to interpret what she'd said, but she knew they understood. Phung ordered two of the others to take her into another room and have a nice talk with her, that had gotten her used like a punching bag a few times. By the end of the first round she was left lying on the floor with blood trickling down the corner of her mouth. But she'd been relentless as she wiped it away and said, standing up, "I'm guessing that you boys have picked up on the custom 'When in Rome do as the Romans do', and since you're in California you're going to do as the Californians do. Should be a nice step up from beating people with bamboo like they're a panda bear, though I have to say it is amazing how you could defeat the American soldiers given your limited weapons and primitive tools of war."

Pham said something that she didn't understand, but based on his tone and the way he moved, she had a feeling that she knew what it meant. Not willing to show any readable emotions, she hooked the tips of her thumbs into the corners of her eyelids and slanted them out and said, imitating Hannibal's Mr. Lee, "Ze master say…one need not overpower enemy if one can outsmart them." She let her eyes snap back to their normal shape and added in the same tone, "A-Team outsmart you many times."

Nothing she said did her any favors, and she knew they wouldn't, she was surprised though that they didn't beat her up more than they did. Well she thought, they must really be desperate to find out where the A-Team was, and keeping in mind that line about her bad heart, maybe they considered this to be taking precautions. Killing her would definitely be a last resort but she also knew that last resorts are used all the time, so it was just a matter of how long they were going to put up with her before they finally executed her. It did strike her as odd though because this had to be a very light version of what they did to the soldiers during the Vietnam War; maybe it _was_ just a matter of 'When in Rome', or maybe just in 15 years they had finally gotten a sense of humor about them. Would they go easier on a civilian than a soldier when interrogating them? Would it even make a damn difference whether it was a soldier or a little old grandmother or even the pope? She didn't know, that was one thing nobody ever told her about. For that matter, did people like this believe in going easier on the women than the men? Well there hadn't been any female combat soldiers in Vietnam so that was impossible to truly determine, what they did amongst their own kind was irrelevant. Whatever it was, Jean _was_ thankful that she hadn't already been beaten within an inch of her life and used the time she had to her advantage to try and figure a way out of here.

After about the first two hours, she seemed to show defeat and she told the men that she would talk.

"Where is the A-Team?" Phung demanded to know.

"I don't know where they are," she said, "But I know somebody who does."

"Who?"

"His name is Colonel Decker, he served with the A-Team in Vietnam, he's very good friends with them, and we're very close as well," she said, "I can contact him, he will tell me where they are, and I will tell you, is there a working phone in this place?"

Surprisingly there was, they wouldn't let her dial the number incase it was a trick, she told them the number for Decker's office and the phone was put on speaker, it was answered on the second ring.

"Colonel Decker, this is Jean Rhodes, do you remember me?" she asked, "I have to tell you something about the A-Team."

There was a slight pause before Decker asked, "What is it?", clearly not getting what kind of gag this was a buildup for.

Jean threw her cool demeanor to the wayside and screamed into the phone all in one breath, "Decker the Viet-Cong are here! We're about a mile out of Los Angeles on the north side, look for the abandoned warehouses out past the big Catholic cemetery, we're in the middle!"

That was all she got out before Le ripped the phone out of the wall, Jean disconnected the heavy receiver from the rest of it and conked Tran in the head with it hard enough that she heard his skull crack. She was ambushed by the guerillas and quickly taken down, but not before she got a few lucky shots off with them, gouged one man in the eyes, punched another in the throat, used her own weight to shove one man in front of another and they collided with each other and fell down. Somebody hit her in the head and everything went white and half muffled for a while. She remained conscious but wasn't able to tell what was going on other than the simple fact that she was being forced to her feet and out of the building and back into the truck.

Jean had truly believed she would be killed for what she did but surprisingly she was not, instead their answer had been only to move her to a new location, and that was where the butcher shop had come in. She didn't know how far they were from the last place, or from Los Angeles for that matter, and she didn't know if Decker would ever find the warehouse, or if he'd even take her seriously. When she was thrown into the freezer she had for one brief moment allowed herself to consider the options regarding when and how she would die. She pushed it away though because she knew it did no good to dwell on that, she also pushed aside the nagging voice reminding her that nobody was coming, nobody knew where she was, she wasn't going to come out of this alive. She remembered something that Hannibal had said, he hadn't said it to her but she knew his philosophy, or at least the rough idea of it: accept the fact that you're dead right now, then if you come out of it alive you'll be that much better off.

She tried to remember how long it took to freeze to death, and how low the body temperature had to be for that to happen. Of course she had no way to know what her body temperature currently was, or would be as the Cong soldiers continued to turn down the thermostat on the freezer. Twice already they threw her in, took her out for a few minutes of interrogation, and then put her back in. She was gambling on the idea that they would come for her again within another hour, maybe longer, she wasn't sure but she suspected they left her in a few minutes more every time also. She may die in this ice chest tonight but she could sure as hell take a couple more people down with her, all she had to do was get her hands around Phung's skinny neck and then SNAP it. His men could kill her but they would also lose their fearless leader, it sounded like a fair trade to her.

Once again she became like a mouse running a maze, except the only place for her to go was around the four walls. As long as she kept moving, and kept her mind going, then she'd be alright. Other people when they try to test their coherency and memory would recite the state capitals or the names of the presidents, in chronological order, she couldn't do that to save her life on a good day. So to pass the time, she instead thought about movies. As a child she watched old movies all the time and a few of them to the point that she knew every line word for word, and could memorize the whole film. If she could keep that up, then by the time she finished with one, they should be coming for her again.

She remembered one old movie she watched all the time when she was little, with Vincent Price as a doctor, and that woman from "Bewitched" as a mystery novelist who rented a house where a killer in a black hood with steel claws broke into looking for a million dollars in stolen money. Thinking about it now she considered the irony, towards the end of that movie, the woman became locked in a hidden room and was quickly running out of air, and nobody knew where she was because it was up on the third floor behind a fireplace. Well, Jean might not be running out of air, but when it froze it was no fun to take in, and after a while her chest and ribs began throbbing from the cold and the inside of her nose burned all the way up to her sinuses. As she walked around the room, in her mind she recited all the dialogue from the movie, and was surprised at how well she still remembered it after all these years. When she neared the end of her recitation, she heard the lock being undone on the door, so she dropped down on the floor with her knees drawn up and her back leaning against the wall, as if she was half dead from exhaustion and cold, and maybe she was.

The door opened and a light shone in. She saw three sets of feet, and saw Phung crouch down to see her. She wanted to laugh, he almost looked sorry to see her like this, and he told her, "It does not have to be like this, you don't need to be here, all you have to do is tell us what we want to know and you can go free."

Jean brought her head up to see him and she said weakly, "I've heard that speech before, and I'm going to hear it again someday, and the next time I do, it's going to be staring down the business end of a guillotine…so I'm going to say to you now what I'm going to say then…chop-chop."

Her resistance upset him greatly and he looked like he was going to punch her lights out, instead he stood up and told the others, "Turn it down to zero."

Well that was it. This was the way it was all going to end. Once the door closed, Jean stood up and resumed pacing around the room, mentally recalling another movie roughly an hour long. She was going to fight the icy death as long as possible, however short that was.

* * *

Once Murdock had regained consciousness, he was practically frantic with hysteria, and nobody could blame him. Hannibal had taken note that the blood on the wall was dry, meaning that Jean had been taken several hours ago, but the question was where to? And what did the Viet-Cong want with her of all people?

The A-Team was brought out of their deep scrutinizing when they heard the front door slam downstairs, and heard a very familiar voice call out, "Smith!"

They looked at each other and ran towards the stairs, and Hannibal called to the colonel down below, "Decker! What're you doing here? This is a bad time, Jean's gone."

"I know," Decker told him, "She called my office tonight and told me what happened, we followed the directions she gave us and found three truckloads of VC soldiers moving out just as we arrived. We chased them down and managed to take out one of the trucks, but the other two got away."

"Naturally it was one of those two that had Jean with them," Face guessed.

"Must be, she wasn't in the one we recovered," Decker answered, "Got six men, two were killed instantly, another two died in the hospital earlier tonight, and the other two are locked up in a room at the Federal Building, we've been interrogating them since they were brought in. I tried getting some answers out of the two in the hospital also."

"And?" Hannibal asked.

Decker looked at him as if he was crazy and asked, "Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a deathbed confession out of someone who has no conscience to clear? No, they talked a little but not enough to help us any. All they said was something about a cold room. That could mean anything, and any place."

"What about the two you have in custody?" Hannibal asked.

"They won't talk," Decker told him, "No matter what I've tried, I can't break them. I thought maybe you'd like to try your luck, I've had men calling this house around the clock but there wasn't any answer. This is the _only_ place I know where any of you might be so I decided to come over and see for myself."

"Well we just got in from out of town, we know that the struggle definitely started here," Hannibal said, "And we've got to find out where Jean is, you lead the way, Decker. We're going to find a way to make those two talk no matter what it takes."

* * *

Jean fell to her knees and choked on the frozen air. This was it, she was going to die, she'd had to accept that fact earlier tonight and now it was becoming a self fulfilled prophecy. She couldn't walk anymore, she couldn't stay balanced, what more her mind was starting to go, she couldn't concentrate, she could hardly think.

When she had been a little girl, her grandmother had told her the Russian folktale about Jack Frost, who was not a nice spirit as he was so often portrayed on TV and in music. The real Jack Frost's full name was Jack Frost the Ruby Nosed, and to hear the description of him made him sound like Santa Claus, a little old man with a big white beard; it was his job to bring winter wherever he went, and to anything he touched. Therefore he couldn't touch people, the way the story went was he had spared the life of a poor little girl cast out to die by her wicked mother, and he likewise had hugged and frozen to death the evil little rich girl of the same mother when she ordered him around to bring her treasures. Jean had never been one to believe in folktales but as the temperature dropped even lower in the freezer she was now convinced that he was real, and he was coming for her.

All resistance and fight in her were gone, she didn't know anymore how many hours she'd been in this ice box, but she knew she simply couldn't carry on anymore. It pained her to admit defeat, but knew that her time had run out, and that this was the end of the line. As she sank to the floor and curled on her side, one lucid thought went through her mind, she knew the general consensus was that hell was red hot and full of fire and everybody burnt, but she was hoping Heaven was warm too…for that matter she was hoping that was the direction she'd go in, in a few minutes.

There wasn't a single part of her body that wasn't half frozen already and burning with cold, but her eyes felt hot as she felt them well up with tears. What a way to end up, a TV dinner. As she closed her eyes, she felt a new sudden gust of even colder air that she didn't think was even possible. Jack Frost the Ruby Nosed had just entered the freezer and had come to embrace her. She lay very still on the floor and waited for death to take her, in the back of her mind she could hear that sweet, somber tune of the snow globe Murdock had given her for an early Christmas present, her _last_ Christmas present. Even now on the verge of death she could hear the words as plain as day:

_God rest ye merry gentlemen,_

_Let nothing you dismay,_

_Remember Christ our Savior _

_Was born on Christmas Day_

_To save us all from Satan's power_

_When we were gone astray_

_Oh tidings of comfort and joy_

_Comfort and joy_

_Oh tidings of comfort and joy  
_

Comfort and joy. Neither of those things were to be found here, but Jean knew there would be in a few minutes when she died; her body betraying her, she felt herself curl onto her side with her arms folded tight over her chest in a last attempt to keep warm. Her heart felt like it was doing jumping jacks, by now it was the only part of her that was convulsing, her body had suddenly stopped reacting to the cold. In the dark recesses of her mind she remembered that as long as a cold person shivered, they were fighting against the cold and trying to stay warm, but when the shivers stopped...the body stopped fighting and accepted its frosty death. It occurred to her that she must be ready, her time had come, as everything went still and quiet and dark, she could still hear the song playing.

_Oh tidings of comfort and joy  
_


	16. Chapter 16

It had been a quick and short drive from Jean's house out to the Federal Building with Decker. The A-Team had just barely gotten in the front door with him when Murdock charged ahead of the rest of them in a blind rage screaming, "Let me at them! I'm going to murder them! I'm going to rip their heads off and spit down their throats! I'm gonna…"

"Get back here, Murdock," B.A. grabbed him by the back of his jacket and yanked him back, "You'll get your chance soon enough."

"What're the odds?" Face asked as they walked down the corridor, "15 years after we bust out of the Cong prison camp and they come to Los Angeles looking for us. Now there's a breed of people that can hold a grudge, only question is why now?"

"I have a feeling we're going to find out _real_ fast," Murdock told him.

"I know this really isn't the time to bring this up," Hannibal said to Decker as they got ahead of the others, "But I appreciate you doing this for us, Decker."

Decker glanced back to make sure the others were out of earshot and he said to Hannibal, "Between you and me, Smith, I happen to like Murdock's wife, I'd hate to see what those Cong boys are capable of doing to her, though I'm sure she's given them hell every step of the way."

"You do?" Hannibal asked, a bit shocked.

Hannibal swore the roof was going to fall in, Decker was actually smiling, he was almost laughing as he confided in Hannibal, "Well I don't appreciate having my radio shot to pieces five inches from my ear or waking up in a drunk tank in another state without my pants, but she certainly makes the gaps between _our_ chases a lot more interesting." Then the smile was gone and his professional, cold and mean demeanor returned and he added, "But don't tell her that."

"Yeah, if we find her you've got a deal," he replied.

"Down this way," he led them down another corridor and opened a door.

They went in and found the two Vietnamese men in their late 30s handcuffed and seated at a table. They saw the A-Team and the looks on their faces were nothing short of shocked; this had definitely _not_ been the way they planned to find the A-Team

"What do you think, Smith, they look familiar to you?" Decker asked.

"Well I've never been good with names," Hannibal coyly replied, "But their faces sure ring a bell."

"Sure, I remember them too," Murdock added, "These are two of the little brothers of those guards that locked us up in the prisoner camp back during the war."

Face chose that moment to chime in, "They _also_ remind me of that pack of VC rats we rescued a woman from a few years ago."

Hannibal nodded, "Quite right, Lieutenant, you get the banana." He turned to the other colonel in the room and said, "Oh Decker, would you mind leaving us alone in private with these gentlemen for a few minutes?"

Decker got that sickening smirk on his face again as he said, "It would be my pleasure, Smith."

"If you've got a TV set out there somewhere," Murdock suggested, "Crank up the volume."

Decker stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him, and the A-Team turned towards the two captives, who were already dreading what was about to happen to them.

* * *

Decker was standing right by the door and keeping an eye on the time while Hannibal and the others dealt with the two guerillas inside. The rooms weren't soundproofed so he couldn't figure out why he could hardly hear any noise coming from the room. He didn't know _what_ the A-Team was doing in there but it didn't sound like they were mopping the floor with the Cong soldiers. Only 20 minutes after he left the room, the door flew open as Hannibal rushed out with the others behind him as he said, "Come on, we've got to go!"

"What happened?" Decker asked.

"They talked, that's what happened!" Murdock said as he ran ahead of the others.

"The rest of the gang is holed up in an old butcher shop five miles west of the warehouse," Hannibal told Decker, "They say that's where Jean's being held now but they both swear they don't have any idea what's happening to her."

"And after what we did to them," Face added, "I _really_ doubt they'd hold out on us, they don't seem to be cut from the same cloth as their predecessors." He wouldn't admit it out loud but he could admit to himself that perhaps they'd taken a little longer than they should've just to get the information on where the others were. This had been a once in a lifetime opportunity to get revenge on the same men who shared in the responsibility of when the A-Team had been among the many U.S. soldiers trapped in Cong prison camps. They'd taken a few extra minutes to get a few shots in for their own time locked up, tortured, starved, as well as revenge for all those who hadn't been lucky enough to escape and live to see another day. Actually, now that Face thought about it, he'd be surprised if those two lived through the night after the shape they'd left them in, but he didn't care about that now, and he doubted he ever would.

"I'll have Crane round up some MPs and we'll follow," Decker told them, "Right now this takes precedence over even catching you!"

Hannibal turned back towards him and said, "I doubt we'll need your help but if you insist on coming I _do_ recommend you bring plenty of body bags, this isn't going to be anything _but_ ugly, especially if anything's happened to Jean."

They left the building, got in the van and sped out of there, B.A. pushing the accelerator all the way to its limit as they raced through the otherwise empty streets between points A and B. In the back, Murdock and Face were getting the rifles out and making sure they were ready to go as soon as they hit the ground running. In the side window Hannibal could see two MP cars following behind them with the lights spinning but the sirens off, no sense giving an advance warning that they were coming but in the meantime there was plenty of reason to make sure anybody else on the road knew to stay out of their way. Hannibal turned and saw Face and Murdock in the backseat ready for when they reached their intended destination, but he also noticed how Murdock's eyes seemed to be looking down at something even though he was staring straight ahead.

"Murdock, you alright?" he asked.

At first he didn't seem to hear Hannibal, they recognized this as him disconnecting, it had happened shortly after he crashed his plane in Vietnam, he had severed himself and his thoughts from the present time and the world seemed to drift away where he was concerned. Hannibal sincerely hoped that wasn't happening again because he hated having to slap the sense back into the Captain; it especially wasn't any fun when he decided to hit back.

Finally, Murdock's eyes lifted and saw him and he said in a grim tone, "Hannibal, if they've hurt her…" of course there didn't seem to be much question to _if_ they had done anything, just a matter of _what_. He let go of what he was originally going to say and simply told Hannibal, "There won't be any prisoners taken, no mercy shown to any of them."

Hannibal nodded slowly and replied, "I wouldn't expect any." And why should he? Why should any of them be expected to show _any_ mercy towards these people who wouldn't know what it was if it fell on them? The guards of the camps sure as hell didn't believe in mercy, showed absolutely none to any of them, and in this very instant it was _not_ about being the better person, it was about vengeance for everything that had taken place in those dark days back in the jungles of 'Nam.

After a few minutes, Hannibal saw the butcher shop up ahead and he told B.A., "Floor it!"

B.A. buried the accelerator into the floor and forced the van up onto the pavement and right through the front of the building. Needles to say that the men inside the shop hadn't been expecting that; the van skidded to a stop and the doors flew open and the A-Team jumped out with their guns drawn and ready to fire and they were screaming orders at everybody to stand where they could be seen with their hands high up in the air and that anybody who didn't cooperate would be shot on sight. Everybody reached for the sky, all except one man, the one that they took for being the leader of this pack of gorillas.

"We meet again, Colonel Smith," he said smugly.

Hannibal only vaguely remembered the man but he knew that he had seen that face every day in the camps. That alone was enough to send him into a borderline murderous rage though he never seemed to lose his cool, hard demeanor.

"And it'll be for your funeral if you don't tell us where the girl is," Hannibal said, and to get the point across he wasn't fooling around, he took two steps closer to the man and stuck his gun right against his heart.

Now his hands went up, but he laughed and said, "You're too late, Colonel Smith, she's been in the freezer for six hours, she's dead."

"If she is then you are too," Hannibal told him, "Only you won't go quickly or painlessly like she did, _if_ she's dead."

"Oh she is," he insisted, and laughed, "The A-Team finally fails to save someone."

In the blink of an eye Hannibal drew his gun back and swung it like a baton, hitting him square in the face and knocking him out.

"We'll see about that," he turned to the others and demanded to know, "Where's the freezer?"

They pointed towards the back, and since it was at this time that Decker and the MPs were coming in the new hole in the side of the building where the front wall used to be, all four of them took off running for the back.

"There it is!" Face pointed to the large metal door up ahead with a thermostat set beside it and a lock on the door.

B.A. ripped the chain off the door and practically tore the door off its hinges. A blast of frozen air clouded the entrance and it choked them all, but they ignored it and charged head-on into the freezer. There was no light inside the freezer but with the light shining in from outside, they were able to see Jean lying huddled on the floor over in a corner.

"Jean!" Murdock exclaimed as they ran towards her.

They carefully grabbed hold of her and carried her out of the freezer and set her down on the floor outside where she could warm up and they could see her better in the overhead lights.

Too late.

Jean lay stiff, her skin arctic cold to the touch, her eyes closed, her chest still and unmoving, her skin pale with a thin buildup of ice covering it and a tinge of blue around her lips, a stray tear half rolled down her face and frozen to her skin. Old Man Winter had kissed her goodnight. Murdock's eyes welled up with tears and a bunch of strangled sobs caught in his throat before he was able to rip loose with a scream of, "No, no, NO!"

Face and Hannibal tried to feel through her icy skin for a pulse or a heartbeat, even though they already knew it didn't look good, and they couldn't feel anything to suggest otherwise. Murdock's chest heaved up and down rapidly as his whole body became wracked with gut wrenching sobs. He placed his hands on Jean's pale face and through her cold hair before he collapsed on the floor beside her and wrapped his arms around her frigid body and held her close, refusing to be separated from her, over his cries he got out a string of quiet mumbled apologizes for being too late, for letting this happen.

Face watched this as the others did in complete horror and shock and also grief. His own eyes had become two tear filled dams about to burst as he watched his best friend cradle his former wife's frozen body and rock her in his arms. Hannibal and B.A. also looked sick by what had happened, which fit accordingly with how they felt. How had this happened? Why had it happened? Those were the questions, to which there would never be any answers. Face lowered his head and cupped his hand over his eyes as he started shaking with sobs as well. He just couldn't believe that this had happened, he knew none of them could. He felt Hannibal's strong hand on his shoulder and reached up to grab it, he needed to feel that presence. He forced his eyes open and looked back at the scene before him, and he saw something that made his blood run cold and he developed a bone breaking grip on Hannibal's fingers.

"Hannibal," he croaked out in shock, "Do you see what I see?"

Hannibal looked, and he did, and he felt the blood drain from his face. "Murdock," he said, his voice firm and loud enough without shouting that the pilot could hear him amidst his grief.

Murdock sat up and looked back at the Colonel in a silent question as to what it was he wanted. He saw the other three man staring at Jean in disbelief and he looked down to see what it was, and he saw what they did. When he'd held onto Jean his tears had spilled down and landed on her face, and through closed lids he could see her eyes twitching in response to the hot drops of liquid on her skin.

"Jean?" he'd almost lost his voice by now, she didn't respond to the call of her name but her eyes kept twitching and now her cheeks were moving up and down as her whole face slowly formed and unformed a grimace in reaction to the wet heat touching her face. Hannibal bypassed decency and shoved his hand down her shirt to feel her heart…nothing…and then a small beat, and then nothing again, and then another small beat.

"It's slow, but it's steady," he told the others in amaze and relief.

"Jean?" Murdock repeated as he reached his hand over and touched her cheek, which was already considerably warmer than it had been a minute ago.

Hannibal gripped Jean's jaw in his hand and forced her mouth open; there was a thin coating of ice on her tongue and around her bottom gums that was already melting, but there didn't appear to be any ice blocking her airway.

"She's not shaking," Hannibal noticed, "She's too cold to even fight it anymore."

Murdock took his jacket off and draped it over Jean's body and grabbed one of her hands and rubbed it in his furiously, moving up and down her equally chilled wrist to get her circulation going and some heat back into her. Face also removed his jacket and placed it under her back, then he grabbed her other arm and did the same, and Hannibal and B.A. also knelt down by her and draped their own coats over her before they proceeded to take her shoes off and try rubbing some heat back into her feet as well.

They heard somebody approaching and saw it was Decker, who froze in his tracks when he saw them hovered over Jean and he asked, "What happened?"

"They locked her in the freezer, just about killed her," Hannibal answered.

Decker knelt down beside them and wrapped his hand around Jean's freezing wrist to get an idea of just how bad it really was and he said, "I'll call in an ambulance, we'll get her to the hospital."

"No," Hannibal shook his head, "We'll take her." He turned to Face and told him, "Go get the heater on in the van, turn it on full blast."

"Right," Face got up, stopped only a second to get the keys from B.A., and ran past Decker and out to the front of the building where they'd left he van.

Hannibal took over on Face's side and rubbed Jean's arm, and with his other hand he reached up and ran his hand over the side of her head and through her hair. She was still cold, but she was already better than when they'd found her.

"Jean," he said in a firm and authoritative voice, "Can you hear me? We're going to be moving you into the van in a minute, _can you hear me_?" No response. He tried another approach, he got right next to her and said in his best drill sergeant's voice, "I SAID RISE, CORPORAL, THAT IS AN ORDER!" Nothing. He shook his head and said to Murdock, "She'll probably be more responsive once we have her in the heat." Murdock nodded and slipped Jean's shoes back on her feet, luckily her sneakers were big enough to just pull off and slip on. Hannibal turned to the Sergeant and said, "B.A. why don't you take her out of here?"

"Right, Hannibal," B.A. carefully slipped his massive hands under Jean's body and lifted her up, still with all of their coats covering her, and carried her out to the van.

"Murdock," Hannibal nodded to the captain and said, "Why don't you go with them? I want to speak to Decker alone for a minute, it'll give Jean a chance to warm up a little before we get her out of here"

"Right, Colonel," Murdock sprang to his feet and was off and running.

Hannibal also raised himself up on his feet and turning towards the other colonel he said, "Thanks, Decker."

"I'm sorry, Smith," he replied, "I swear I had _no_ idea what was going on."

"I know you didn't," Hannibal said, "I also know if there's anything in the world you hate more than us, it's Cong soldiers, and Jean must've known that too or she wouldn't have called you." He let out an exasperated huff and said, "At least we got here before it was too late."

Decker scratched a spot on the back of his head and said, "We can get you an escort out of here."

"That won't be necessary," Hannibal told him, "We're not taking Jean to a hospital, I doubt the doctors can do anything for her that we can't, surprisingly she doesn't show any signs of having frostbite. All things considered, she was very lucky tonight, she's still alive. They came for us and they took her instead, now this is our responsibility to fix it however we can."

* * *

Face was sweating like a pig and about sick from the heat in the van, and he'd already had to step out of it for a breather twice. They'd already gotten the van backed out of the shop and back out to the street where they'd have an easier time getting out of there once Hannibal joined them. Hannibal said he'd talk to Decker for a minute and that had turned into ten, and now it was going on twenty. In the back behind the seats they'd gotten Jean settled on the floor wrapped in two heavy blankets, and Murdock was cocooned in them with her as he continued rubbing her hands and pressing his body against hers to merge his body heat with her body.

"Come on, darling, wake up," he said, trying not to sound as frantic as he really was, "Come on, Jean, you're safe now, and as soon as Hannibal gets here we're going to get you home and warm you up, come on, sweetie, open your eyes."

"Too bad we don't have any of Hannibal's liniment now," Face commented, "That should snap her awake."

That gave Murdock a different idea. He took into consideration the fact that Jean had been out of the freezer for about half an hour and had spent the last 20 minutes in a van heated to about 80 degrees, and that, between the rubdown treatment she'd gotten nonstop, ought to work together to make what he was about to do safe or at least safer than if they were still in the cold. He pushed down one of the blankets so he could reach one of the weapon compartments in the back and he took out a small first aid kit he personally kept on hand for emergencies and took out a small bottle of whiskey.

"Murdock, do you think that's a good idea?" Face asked, "You know how dangerous alcohol can be mixed with the cold."

"Well nothing else it'll make her _feel_ warm, that's got to be an improvement over this," Murdock said as he took the lid off, he slipped his hand behind her head so she couldn't choke and poured the contents of the 3 oz. bottle down her throat. "Besides, we'll be getting her to the house when we leave here and it's plenty warm there."

Jean choked and coughed and spat half of the whiskey back into his face, her whole body was wracked by a coughing fit as she swallowed the rest of the burning liquid and for a brief second her whole body shot up before collapsing against the floor again.

"Jean, you alright?" Murdock asked.

Jean slowly worked her eyes open and looked around at her surroundings to figure out where she was, she looked up and saw Murdock and said in amazement, "Murdock, you're here!"

"That's right, we're all here, darling," he told her, "And don't you worry, we've got those Cong boys tied up and Decker's going to personally see to it they never see the light of day again."

"Decker?" she asked weakly, "Then he did find the place."

"And then he found us," Face added, "And then we found you, doing a fine impression of the ice princess."

Jean started shaking and her teeth were chattering and she said, "Yeah, I remember." She looked back to Murdock and said, "I didn't tell them anything, I swear."

"I know you didn't, darling," Murdock said as he kissed her, "I know that. I'm sorry to say, you wouldn't have been any better off if you had."

"I know that, that's _why_ I didn't tell them anything," she replied.

"They said you'd been in the freezer for six hours," Face told her, "Is that true?"

"Six hours?" Jean repeated, and tried to think, she shook her head, "No…I was in the freezer for four hours, but I've been with _them_ for six…I think, what time is it? I remember first two hours at the warehouse, then an hour in the freezer, out, back in an hour, out again, in, and the last time they just left me in there."

"We saw what happened at the house, I'm guessing you got a couple of them _good_," Murdock said.

Jean shivered and her teeth chattered as she nodded and said, "Oh yeah…I got them good, got a couple more before we came out this way." She smiled as she recalled braining one of them with the telephone receiver, though it hurt her teeth when she remembered that sickening CRACK his skull had made with the metal receiver made contact with it. She tilted her head back and yawned and said, "I'm tired, Murdock."

"It's alright, go on to sleep, you're safe now," he told her.

Jean was hardly waiting for his permission, her eyes were closed as soon as he finished talking. A minute later, Hannibal came out and got in the passenger seat and they got out of there, leaving Decker and the MPs to deal with their unexpected visitors to the country.

"And now for home," Face commented.

"Yeah, now for…" something occurred to Hannibal and he said to B.A., "We're not going to Jean's house, we're going to take her to my place for the night."

"How come?" Face asked.

Hannibal turned in his seat and explained, "I hardly think Jean's going to feel safe returning to a house with holes punched in the plaster, blood on the wall and floor, and a jukebox that smells like somebody barbecued a cat. We'll take her to my place tonight, and we'll fix the house up tomorrow."

"Smart thinking, Colonel," Murdock said.

"How's she doing, Murdock?" he asked.

Murdock felt Jean's face, it felt warm but she was still shaking, "She's cold, and she knows it now."

"Well that's a start," Hannibal said.

* * *

It took another 15 minutes for them to get back into L.A., and by the time they reached Hannibal's apartment building, Jean's icy convulsions had slowed down to a tremor but she was still miserable and everybody knew it. Murdock and Face got on either side of her and walked her in the door, up the three flights of stairs to Hannibal's apartment then Face ran on ahead to the bathroom and turned on the hot tap for the bathtub.

"Come on, Jean," Murdock said as he walked her towards the bathroom, "We're going to make some cannibal soup and get it nice and hot, you'll like that, won't you?"

Jean was still half asleep and only a quarter responsive to what he said. Murdock pushed her on the couch first and pulled off her shoes and socks, then got her up again and marched her into the bathroom. There were only a few inches of water in the tub so far but he had her swing her legs over the side and sit down in the tub. The sudden hot water was a shock to her and she let out a scream, not like her skin was burning though, more like somebody had jumped out at her and said 'boo!" and taken her off guard. She was lethargic but not disoriented, and after a few minutes when the water had gotten chest high on her, Face suggested they get out of there before she came back to her senses and started throwing things at them.

Murdock had been reluctant to leave Jean alone but he decided it probably _was_ the best thing to do right now. He kissed her and said they'd be outside and to scream if she needed anything, and he closed the door behind them on their way out. He leaned back against the door, closed his eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks that they'd managed to find Jean in time. Now he knew how B.A. had felt the other night; now that the immediate threat was over he suddenly felt about 10 years older. Of course he knew they weren't out of the woods yet, nobody tangled with the Viet-Cong and walked away unscathed. Even Jean's would-be icy grave wasn't the extent of it, there was more, and he was sure it would rear its ugly head before the night was over.


	17. Chapter 17

Half an hour went by and Jean never emerged from the bathroom nor had she made a sound that the others could hear. Hannibal had taken a spare change of Murdock's pajamas out of the closet so she'd have something dry to change into and he went to the bathroom door and put his ear against it to try and hear her. Nothing. He knocked on the door and called out softly, "Jean?" No response. He raised his voice so he could be heard clearly through the door and he told her, "Alright Jean, I'm coming in, so get your missiles ready!" Realistically he knew that there wasn't anything he hadn't seen before, but he _did_ know that there was _plenty_ that Jean never made a habit of showing anyone, well, after what had happened tonight, decency would have to take a backseat to necessity.

He opened the door and slowly stepped in, giving Jean a chance to yell at him, to throw something at him, something, but nothing of the sort happened. Jean's wet clothes were bunched up in the sink, and she had sunk so low in the tub she was just about to slip under the surface entirely. The air was thick with the steam and humidity from the hot water, he made his way over to the tub to get a better look at her. The surface of the water was filmy and white from the soap, maintaining her dignity intact, her hair was wet and stood up in small spikes like a rooster's comb, her back was hunched over so she was practically facedown in the water, and her eyes had a dead look in them that just stared ahead at nothing.

"I brought you some of Murdock's pajamas so you have something to wear tonight," he told her as he put them down by the tub, "Tomorrow we'll go back and pick up some of your clothes so you can go home in something normal."

Nothing he said seemed to register with her, she never moved, her eyes never changed over to indicate he had her attention, and yet he still believed that she was listening to him.

"I know you're not _alright_ after what happened tonight, kid, but are you alright?" Hannibal asked her.

That seemed to do it. She blinked and her eyes were different, and she blinked several more times before turning her head slightly to the side to look at him and she said simply, "No, I'm not alright…but I will be."

"I'm sorry, kid," Hannibal said as he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him and kissed her damp hair, "I'm so sorry…I had no idea this was going to happen."

"I know you didn't," Jean said, "None of us did, that's _why_ it happened."

Hannibal rubbed her back between the shoulder blades and told her, "You've got every right to be mad at us, it's only because of us that any of this happened to you."

Jean slowly shook her head and replied, "I don't care about any of that."

"Alright, then talk to me, I know _something's_ going through your mind, what is it?" Hannibal asked.

Jean didn't say anything at first, then without warning, she turned and latched onto Hannibal, succeeding in unintentionally scaring the hell out of him, and she told him, "I would've died tonight if you hadn't found me."

Hannibal nodded grimly, Jean probably knew _just_ how close she came to dying in that freezer, and he could just imagine what had been going through her mind the whole time.

"I know, I'm sorry, Jean."

Hannibal lightly pushed her off of him and grabbed one of the towels off the rack behind the tub and draped it over her, to hell with the laundry. He smoothed back part of her hair that was already half dry and asked her, "Would you feel better if I sent Murdock in here? Would you rather talk to him?" Somehow he got a nagging feeling that it would be better not to leave her alone, and he could tell she wasn't too out of it to object if she didn't want to. But to his surprise she nodded in response to his question.

"Alright," he said as he stood up and went to the door.

Jean sank further down in the tub and with one hand kept the towel closed like a robe, she brought her other hand up and ran it over her face once as she closed her eyes and considered her options.

She could hear Murdock outside the door announcing his arrival, he announced every step he came closer to the door as if to give her fair warning, then the door opened and he came in and closed it behind him and stood facing the door instead of her. She didn't say anything, so after a few seconds he turned around slowly and when he saw Jean he went over to the tub and knelt down beside her. "Hannibal says you wanted to see me?"

"Not really," she answered, "But I didn't want him sticking around either."

Murdock folded his arms on the edge of the tub and asked her, "How're you feeling?"

"I'm alright," she told him, "Other than being turned into a snow cone, they really didn't do too much to me."

Murdock put his arms around her carefully and kissed her as he said, "I'm so sorry for what happened, darling."

"You didn't do it," she said, "You didn't do anything, you weren't even here."

"I know," he replied, "And I'm so sorry."

"Stop apologizing," she said, "Never apologize, it shows a weakness of character. Murdock can I tell you something?"

"You know you can tell me anything," he said, "What is it?"

She looked him in the eyes and told him, "I never once had _any_ expectations that anyone was going to find me tonight, I _knew_ nobody was going to come for me, I _knew_ there wasn't going to be any rescue. So don't think I blame you or any of the others, I _knew_ you wouldn't even be home until tomorrow, so I tried finding a way to get myself out, obviously it didn't work, but at least I got Decker in on the action, and it's to my understanding that four of those gorillas bit the dust tonight, that's something anyway. It's kind of funny when you think about it, these guys were so clever and managed to catch, maim and kill so many U.S. soldiers with their limited supplies and knowhow, but twice in a row they get shown up by you guys, and they can't deal with that. So what do they do? They come 8000 miles to America, and search all of L.A. for you guys, and they find you, but every time they try tracking you, somehow they _lose_ you, so then their last resort is to try and beat the answers out of me. So much for intelligence in that part of the world after all."

Murdock blinked back tears as he looked at her and thought back to how close they had come to losing her. He leaned over and kissed her again and said, "It was an incredibly brave thing you did tonight. I'm sorry, baby, I love you so much."

"I love you too," she replied, "I guess that was what I hated most about having to die tonight, never being able to see you again, no chance to say goodbye.'

They realized that they were both crying by now and they laughed at the fact in spite of themselves.

"You know, this reminds me of something," Murdock told her.

"What?" she asked.

"Remember that time when we had to take Hannibal to the hospital because his appendix burst, and remember what happened when we brought him home?" She turned her head as she tried to remember and he nuzzled his face against hers like a dog and asked, "Hmm? Remember after we got him put to bed for the night, and you and Face took turns washing me like I was a cocker spaniel?"

Jean laughed as she remembered, "Yeah, you were cute like that."

"How?" Murdock inquired.

She smiled at him and answered, "At my mercy. I had you right where I wanted you, I could do anything I wanted to you."

"Yes, I still remember," Murdock said as he rubbed his scalp and made a series of pained expressions.

Looking at her again, he noticed something and instead he ran his hand through her hair and he realized it was partially wet, but it was also oily and hadn't been washed. Most likely she'd just dunked her head under the water initially to get warm, and he asked her, "You need some help?"

Jean dropped her gaze and reluctantly nodded and absentmindedly tightened the grip on the towel in her balled up hand. He turned on the warm water and with a little maneuvering, got her turned around so her head lay under the tub's faucet and massaged his fingertips over her scalp. She had her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her entire face was a grimace in an attempt to keep any water from getting up her nose or in her eyes, but he had a feeling that she was secretly enjoying the contact with another person; or maybe she wasn't enjoying it but instead needed it, that was something else he understood very well.

They all had plenty of experience with isolation in the Cong prisoner camps, it was debatable whether the worst was that or the physical injuries they sustained. Personally he didn't mind so much getting beaten half to death, so long as he wasn't alone, if the others were around then it wasn't so bad. Jean had had six hours alone in their company, he couldn't imagine what that had been like for her, and to hear her say she knew nobody would come to save her, that was a rusty knife right in his stomach. But, he knew it would've been far worse if she had died that night _hoping_ that somebody would rescue her, he imagined that was a far worse way to die than simply being able to accept your fate. He never would've forgiven himself if that had happened, if they really _had_ been too late.

When he finished washing Jean's hair, he shut off the taps and lightly tried wringing her hair out a little.

"You were right," Jean said.

"What?" he asked, coming out of his thoughts, "What'd you say?"

"I said you were right," she told him, "You told Face you saw a Cong soldier, you were right."

"Yeah well I wish I wasn't," he said as he knelt down next to the tub, "For once I wish I _was_ just crazy."

Jean folded her arms on the edge of the tub and told him, "If it's all the same to you, Murdock, I don't want to talk about those people, or what happened tonight, or about any of that."

"Alright," he said, "What then?"

She smiled at him and said, "Tell me about what you did to Liam Stone. I want to hear about what you did to that guy."

Murdock found this to be a relief so he relayed the events of the past couple of days to her and watched as she seemed to follow his every word. When he was done, he realized how long Jean had been in the water and suggested they get her out of there since the hot water had to have given out a long time ago. He helped her up and got her wrapped in a dry towel and hanged the other over the shower curtain's rod to dry out and helped Jean out of the tub. She shivered as the cooler air hit her and she padded over to the mirror on the medicine cabinet. Murdock came up behind her and saw her reflection and rubbed his hands against her back and asked, "You alright, Saint?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she answered with a small shiver as goosebumps formed along her collarbone and she added, "I'll be out in a few minutes."

"Take your time," Murdock said as he went to the door and stepped out.

* * *

Hannibal's apartment was not a bad place to stay but it was poorly heated, as soon as Jean had stepped out of the bathroom she started shaking and shivering again. While they waited for the thermostat to pick up, they got her settled in the living room and wrapped up in a couple of blankets to warm up. While Murdock and B.A. kept an eye on her, Face went into the kitchen where Hannibal had seen about getting some dinner ready for everybody. It was a long day and he was sure they were all half past starved. He also had a teakettle on the burner and it was just about at its whistling point.

"How's she doing?" he asked Face.

"Not well," Face answered, "We've got her on two heating pads, wrapped up in an electric blanket and she's still freezing."

"She say anything?" Hannibal asked.

"Hardly," Face said, "It's scary, Hannibal."

"What do you mean?"

"As long as we've known Jean, I've never seen her act like this," Face told him, "She's not saying anything, she's not doing anything, it's like all the fight's gone out of her."

"It could very well at that," Hannibal replied, "She was prepared to die tonight, she accepted that and accepted that there wasn't anything she could do about it, it does happen."

"Hannibal," Face pointed back to the living room, "Take a look at her!"

He moved away from the table and poked his head into the living room and saw Jean wrapped up like an Eskimo in his chair, her whole body was shaking and he could hear her teeth chattering and other than that she wasn't moving or making any noise. No, not like Jean whatsoever. Hannibal went back into the kitchen, cranked up the burner under the teakettle and took a ceramic mug out of the cupboard.

"What do you think, Hannibal?" Face asked.

"Well I think it's like someone who's slept for six hours and is still tired and tries to go back to bed. If you drag that person out of bed and make them walk around the room a few times, they'll shake off the fatigue and be wide awake," he said.

"Is this another one of your bad proverbs that everybody hates?" Face asked.

"Very funny, Lieutenant," Hannibal replied.

"Well what's it mean?" Face asked.

"It means Jean needs a little something to jerk her back to her old self," Hannibal said, "Something to dropkick her and get her going again."

"Yeah, but what?" Face asked.

Hannibal turned the burner off and took out a small can of instant coffee and scooped two spoons into the mug and filled it with the scalding hot water.

"What're you going to do with that?" Face asked.

"I'm going to try something with her," Hannibal told him.

Face didn't get it, "But it's just coffee, what's that going to do?"

"Hopefully something, follow me and you'll see," Hannibal said.

Face _really_ didn't get it, but he followed Hannibal into the living room and watched as the Colonel pressed the hot mug into Jean's hands and told her, "Take a drink of this, kid, you'll feel better."

Jean let her hands get hot against the heated ceramic first before taking a swallow of the concoction; she never swallowed it, instead she spat it back out and exclaimed, "Coffee? You gave me coffee?" She threw the contents of the mug at him and tossed it across the room as she wrestled through the layers of blankets around her and jumped to her feet and stormed over towards him, "What in the hell did you give me that _crap_ for? I told you before I hate that stuff, so why did you give it to me?!"

Hannibal remained his typical calm, cool and collective self as he nonchalantly responded, "Welcome back, kid."

"What?" Jean asked, and then as if coming out of a trance she looked around at the apartment and at all of them, and the old Jean seemed to be back, and confused.

Murdock especially noticed the change and with a yelp of relief, he hugged her and repeated, "Welcome back, Jean!"

Jean growled as she tightly hugged Murdock in return and buried her face in his shoulder, and replied, "It's good to _be_ back."

"Looks like it's going to be a merry Christmas after all," Hannibal commented.

* * *

It was 2:15 in the morning, and everybody was asleep except Hannibal. The apartment wasn't entirely dark. Having Murdock stay with him off and on again through the years, Hannibal had taken to keeping a few plug-in night lights in the outlets in the living room, kitchen and bedroom to switch on at a moment's notice. Murdock always insisted it wasn't that he was worried there was something under the bed or behind the door, but why break your neck tripping over something trying to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night? Well, there had certainly been logic to that argument, especially when two or more of them were staying there together. In the overall course of the room, the light offered wasn't much but he was able to see his way around, and he had to admit it gave the rooms a more comfortable atmosphere having _some_ light in the middle of the night.

He could see the light pouring out from the bedroom, and he got up from his chair to take a look inside. All was quiet so he knew he wouldn't be seen. He stood in the doorway and saw Murdock and Jean asleep in each others arms in a tangle of bedcovers, and Face off to the other side of the bed with his face buried in the pillow he was hugging in his sleep. They'd gone to bed a couple hours ago, but he didn't think they really fell asleep until sometime in the past hour. To look at them now, all quiet and peaceful, and cute together, nobody would ever know or could even guess what had happened to them tonight. He wished they could be as lucky. He craned his neck to get a better look at Murdock and Jean; the fates must've had one in their favor because all he could see in them was two young people in love, at face value anyway the horrors of the night seemed to have been etched away.

He was surprised, through the night Jean seemed to be okay. After her little jolt back to reality, Hannibal had returned to the kitchen and made dinner for all of them, nothing fancy of course, just hamburgers with all the trimmings and potato chips. At the time Jean had said she wasn't hungry, but he knew she hadn't been fed the whole time she was at the VC's mercy. Murdock came into the kitchen to help cook and explained he knew how to get Jean to eat, he had taken a handful of pickle chips out of the jar, grilled them in the frying pan while the burgers cooked, flipped them and then poured them on top of her burger and let them smother into the cheese. It didn't look too appetizing to Hannibal, but as soon as Jean got a whiff of it, she was on it like a piranha and ate it, half a bag of potato chips and drank two cokes to go with it. He'd have to remember to get more groceries tomorrow.

Nobody had wanted to talk about what happened that night, but Jean needed to know what had happened to Phung and the others. Murdock explained how Hannibal knocked him cold with his rifle, and then left them to Decker to deal with, and added that Decker was pushing for a firing squad for every last one of them. This seemed to please Jean, even if it was just talk. After that they sat around talking for about an hour or more, then everybody got tired and decided it was time to call it a night. Hannibal had announced that Jean and Murdock could take his bed, and added that Face would stay with them. He'd been just outside the room as Murdock got Jean put to bed, she had been half asleep as he pushed her onto the mattress and she lay still as he got her tucked in. But when he moved, she reached out and grabbed his arm and said in a weak, tired voice and with her eyes more closed than open, "Don't go, Murdock, don't, don't leave me alone…" Surprisingly she had a very strong grip for a woman half dead with exhaustion.

He patted the hand gripping his arm and assured her, "Don't worry, darling, I'm not going anywhere, I'm going to stay right here with you all night, and so will Face." Murdock had his back to the Lieutenant otherwise he'd see from the look on his face that he didn't look too pleased with that arrangement.

One at a time they'd gone into the bathroom and changed for bed, Murdock was the first one back and he jumped into bed alongside Jean. Hannibal continued his voyeurism from outside the bedroom door and saw them in bed together, they were both almost asleep and Jean was half laying on Murdock using his chest as a pillow. Murdock lazily stroked his hand through her hair on the back of her head and tiredly murmured, "I love you, baby."

"I love you too," Jean drowsily replied shortly before they both conked out.

And that was exactly how they lay in bed now, neither one of them seemed to have moved an inch, Hannibal saw this and it made him think. An idea came to him and he slowly backed away from the door and went back to the living room. B.A. lay asleep on the couch, completely unaware of anything that was going on. Hannibal held his watch up against the nightlight and pressed a button on it to set an alarm. Then he sat back down in his chair and slowly lulled off to sleep.

He woke up when he heard the alarm beeping. He pressed the same button and shut it off and saw what time it was, almost 6 in the morning. Stepping quietly, Hannibal peered into the bedroom again and saw the three people in bed were still dead to the world and wouldn't be waking up anytime soon. That was one thing in his favor, he returned to the living room and shook B.A.'s shoulder to wake him up, "B.A.," he tried a little louder, "B.A."

"Huh? What?" B.A. woke up and yawned, "What is it, Hannibal?"

"Get up, B.A." Hannibal told him, "We're going to finish that other project of yours and we're going to do it before the others get up."

"Huh? Now?" B.A. asked, noticing it was still dark out.

"Yes now," Hannibal said, "Get up, I'll tell you on the way back to your place."

B.A. shrugged and replied, "Alright," and reluctantly got up.

* * *

It was almost two hours later by the time B.A.'s van pulled up at the curb outside Hannibal's apartment building again.

"Going on 8 o' clock, they're probably up by now," Hannibal said.

"I hope they are," B.A. grumbled, "Then we can get this over with."

They got out of the van, went in the front door, up the three flights of stairs and returned to Hannibal's apartment. They heard sounds coming from the kitchen and knew that the others were definitely awake. They went into the kitchen and saw Face, Jean and Murdock all seated at the table in the process of getting breakfast. Face was dressed for the day with a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs before him as he read the morning paper, but Murdock and Jean were still in their pajamas and Jean's hair stood up like a rooster as she groggily stirred a mug of hot cocoa. Murdock also had a mug of cocoa and was stirring it with a candy cane, then he took it out of his mug, dipped it into Jean's and licked the cocoa off the cane. Murdock then looked up and noticed Hannibal and B.A. and said, "Colonel!" Jean also looked up and Face turned around to see them too.

"Good morning everybody," Hannibal said casually, "I trust you all slept well."

Jean yawned till her mouth looked like a lion's about to bite the trainer's head off and she said, "Yeah I guess you could say that."

"Jean," Hannibal went over to the table and handed her a paper bag and said, "We went by your house and got you a change of clothes, would you mind getting dressed?"

"Don't mind but what's the rush?" she asked as she took the bag from him.

"You'll see in a minute," he told her, "Now go on and get dressed."

"Something going on, Colonel?" Murdock asked curiously.

"You could say that, Captain, why don't you get your clothes on too?" Hannibal suggested.

Murdock went into the bedroom and came back a couple minutes later in his normal clothes. A couple minutes after that Jean also came out of the bathroom dressed in a set of her own jeans, one of her own T-shirts and a pair of her sneakers.

"Alright Hannibal, we're dressed, so where's the fire?" Jean asked.

Hannibal avoided answering the question and said only to both of them, "Why don't you two go sit down in the living room? I want to have a word with both of you."

They looked at each other and let out a couple of 'uh-oh's, but they went, and Face and B.A. followed them, and Hannibal brought up the rear with a Cheshire cat grin on his face before resuming a more serious look. Jean and Murdock sat down on the couch, Face sat in a chair by the couch, and B.A. stood in the doorway as Hannibal went over to the two of them to say his piece.

"Jean," he said as he paced back and forth a short distance as long as the couch so they watched him go back and forth like it was a tennis match, "By now you've probably figured out that I kind of see myself as the father figure in this whole mess that we call a Team."

"I've noticed," she said, not getting where he was going with this.

"Well," he continued, "Sometimes a father has to get between his kids and beat them to a punch when he thinks they're dragging their feet on an important issue, he has to take the initiative for them and get the ball rolling. Now, I've known Murdock a lot longer than you have, and I know when he has the best intentions on something, but this is one time I'm taking it upon myself to speed the process up a bit." He reached into his jacket pocket and told Jean, "I've got an early Christmas present for you, I want you to open it now."

He handed her a small package wrapped in red tissue paper and taped up tightly. Jean looked at it for a few seconds, and then at Murdock, who clearly hadn't anymore a clue what it was than she did, and she looked up at Hannibal who was waiting, and she ripped the paper open.

At first glance it looked to Jean like an old oven thermometer, it was flat and round and metal with a small needle on the front, but she quickly realized that wasn't it. On second glance it almost looked like a police badge, copper in that badge shape with an eagle on top, but in the center was the alphabet, the letters all in a screwed up order, and outside that circle was a circle of numbers that ranged from 1 to 26.

"Alright, I'll bite," she said, "What is it?"

"Jean," Murdock said as he took it from her, "This is what the original official Captain Midnight decoder rings were built like, they didn't used to slip on your finger like the one I had, these were the first real deal. See? You just turn these little levers around to match the letters and numbers to decode, see? 'Be—sure—to—'"

"He's right, Jean," Hannibal told her, "That's exactly what it is."

"Alright," Jean looked clueless, "Uh…thank you, it's very nice, but I don't get the gag of it."

"You see," Hannibal told her, "I remember you saying that if you two ever got engaged again, you wouldn't wear a ring…so I decided this way you could have one without having to wear it."

Now Jean really looked clueless, she turned to Murdock who appeared just as stunned by this revelation as she was.

"Ordinarily I'd leave this job to Murdock," Hannibal said, "But I decided there's no point in pussyfooting around on the matter any longer, so I'm going to ask for him." He knelt down so he could make eye contact with them and turning to Jean he asked her, "How about it, Jean? Are you willing to marry Murdock, again?"

Jean looked at the 'ring' in her hands and looked like she didn't have any idea what the answer was. Then she turned to Murdock and answered simply, "Yes." And without warning she lunged at Murdock and threw her arms around him and squeezed the air out of him.

"Oof, ooh darling," he grunted as he tried to breathe.

Hannibal caught a glimpse of the others through the corner of his eye. Face looked slightly embarrassed to be in the middle of this and B.A. just had a minor look of relief under his ever-present disapproving scowl as he shook his head and grumbled. He turned back to the Captain and the corporal and smiled. As they pulled away from each other, he added, "Of course it's only fair that both members involved have a ring, so," he took the second ring out of his other pocket and it held it out for Murdock, "Congratulations, Captain."

Murdock looked at his ring and let out a howl of delight as he picked it up. "This looks just like the ring I lost back in '73, Colonel, thank you!" he reached forward and hugged Hannibal tightly, then pulled back and asked, "But how…"

"Oh," Hannibal said as he turned back to look at B.A., "You could just say I had a little help."

"It's very nice, Murdock," Jean agreed as she looked it over, "I guess you won't need the one I got you now."

He glanced at her and replied, "Oh hey, nothing doing," he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the silver band and told her, "I'm gonna wear them both," and slipped them both onto his ring finger on his left hand, "See? They both fit perfectly."

"Yes," Jean observed and added, looking towards Hannibal, "I wonder how that could ever have happened."

Hannibal just flashed his trademark grin and took out a new cigar for the day.

* * *

Hannibal had had the idea that it would be better for Jean to stay at his apartment while they went to clean up the mess at her house. She'd been reluctant to stay behind, and furthermore to wait alone, but she finally agreed that she'd wait until they gave the word that it was fit to come back. Hannibal didn't know what she did to keep her mind occupied until he returned late that afternoon to get her, but when he came in she was still sitting on the couch looking at the ring he'd given her.

"I take it you like it, Jean?" he asked as he went over to her.

She looked up at him and said, "It's very nice, a lot of work went into this, why did you do it?"

"Well I figured you were worth it," Hannibal said, "Anybody who could put up with everything you've been through since meeting us…I know it's no easy task and we don't make it any easier."

"How did you ever talk B.A. into making this?" Jean asked.

"Well it was very easy once I told him what it was for," he answered.

Jean balled her hand up around the ring and closed her eyes. Hannibal knew this was still a lot for her to take in. So far as he knew, there had been no engagement between she and Murdock the first time they'd gotten married, they'd just gone out and done it. And that might've been fine for them the first time, but Hannibal already knew that they weren't going to have a traditional wedding and he still held fast to _some_ traditional beliefs and decided it would be better to at least do this right the second time around. He sat down on the couch beside her and watched her as she seemed to fall asleep sitting against the back cushions.

He had never been against their remarrying, and originally he _was_ content to leave the decision to them of when they were going to announce it. But after last night…almost losing somebody always put things in perspective. All he kept thinking about last night was what a waste it had been, he knew how much she and Murdock loved each other, and this had to go and happen before they could be married. And then, when they found out Jean was alive, he knew that the smart thing to do would be to act fast before something else had a chance to happen to them. And then finally last night, when he'd watched them in bed, in that lethargy induced moment, he'd seen just how much they needed each other and knew there wasn't any point in waiting any longer. So he'd dragged B.A. off with him back to the Sergeant's apartment and had him put the finishing touches on the ring. But not before adding one more surprise to it.

"Jean," he got her to look at him and he told her, "I'm sorry about what happened last night."

"You couldn't help it," Jean said.

"Maybe not," Hannibal said, "But you know as well as I do that there's no guarantee that it won't happen again, that somebody else from our past won't come and snatch you up because we're not available for their inquisition. And it's only going to be worse when you and Murdock are married, you're really going to be a target then."

Jean nodded, clearly Hannibal wasn't telling her anything that she hadn't already thought of.

He told her, "We were back in Los Angeles for a while before we got back to the house and saw what had happened…we were here while you were being turned into a popsicle in that deep freeze. If we'd known what was going on, where you were, we would've been there a lot sooner."

"I know," Jean said, "But you couldn't have known."

"Well," he said, "I'm not willing to let that happen again. Here, give me your ring for a minute, I want to show you something." Jean reluctantly handed it over to him and he shower her the little lever that went around the circle of numbers and told her, "I had B.A. fix this up nice and cute for you…now you keep this ring with you, and if anything like that ever happens again and we're not around, you just turn the needle to 5 and 1. That's set to set off a distress frequency on the transmitter I had B.A. implant in the middle of it, it'll work within 10 miles of where we are when it goes off."

"51?" Jean asked.

"No," he shook his head and told her, "5, 1."

"5, 1?" Jean repeated as if she was trying to figure out what the significance of it was, and then it hit her and she laughed, "Oh I get it, 5-1, May 1st, May Day, smart thinking, Hannibal."

"Well," he shrugged, "Sometimes they turn out to be gems."

Author's note: One more chapter to go!


	18. Chapter 18

Author's note: Well here we are finally at the end. I hope everybody's enjoyed reading it, I know I enjoyed writing it. Merry Christmas everybody!

Christmas Eve came and found Jean's already-too-large-for-one person dining room table with three extra leafs put into it to hold all the food, which looked more like they were preparing for a Super Bowl party instead of a Christmas gathering. Already the table had been loaded down with bowls and trays full of sandwich supplies, potato chips, meatballs, hot dogs in buns chopped into miniatures, pigs in a blanket, crackers with cheese and olives, crackers with tuna salad, crab triangles, miniature cheeseburgers on sliced dinner rolls, slices of deep fried eggplant, and baked tuna balls. In the kitchen Jean was loading up the dessert trays with cookies, fudge, fruitcake, pound cake and chocolate covered cherries, while Murdock was putting the final touches on his recipe of grilled vegetable and Cajun fried chicken kabobs.

"Remind me again what we're making all this food for," Jean said, "Are we having a Christmas party, or preparing for the 3rd Marine Division?"

Murdock laughed and said, "Well I know it's a lot, but have you ever seen B.A. eat?"

"Sure," Jean cynically replied, "Quiche, pork chops, lobster, steak, and that's all in one sandwich." She looked at the clock and said, "Hey Murdock, we still gotta get the punch made, they're gonna be here any minute."

"I'm on that," he told her, "Oh by the way, Jean, I couldn't find a bowl big enough to put it in, so I made it in the crock-pot."

Jean slapped herself in the forehead and said, "Well I guess we'll be having hot punch then."

"Oh I didn't turn it on," he said, "I just took it out of the heater and put it on the table."

"That's a relief," she replied, "Did you put everything in it?"

"Two cans of frozen grape juice, two 2-liter bottles of 7-Up, and one sliced orange, lemon, and lime."

"What about the sherry?" Jean asked.

"I forgot," he said.

"We better get that in before B.A. gets here," Jean said as she took the bottle out of the cupboard and added a dash into the punch.

"This ought to be funny, this'll be the first time in that mudsucker's life he ever touched anything stronger than a sody-pop," Murdock commented.

"And he'll never even know it," Jean laughed as she stirred the punch. She looked at the clock and said, "They're going to be here soon."

"Well if they're a few minutes early that won't matter," Murdock told her.

The phone rang and Jean skidded to a stop to answer it, "Hello? Hey Hannibal, are you guys about here?"

Murdock heard her side of the conversation from the kitchen, and stopped what he was doing when he heard Jean scream, "WHAT? You can't be serious. Hannibal! I can't believe you'd do this…what's Murdock going to…" she huffed, "Yeah, alright…yeah, bye," and she slammed down the receiver.

Murdock came out of the kitchen and asked her, "What's the matter?"

Jean was chewing her bottom lip and she told him, "They're not coming."

"What?" Murdock asked in disbelief.

"Hannibal just said something came up and they couldn't make it tonight," Jean said, and kicked the leg of the table, "Can you believe that? Can you believe the nerve of them? We go through all this trouble, spend all day cooking and they're not even coming!"

"Not coming?" Murdock repeated, "Not coming for Christmas?"

They heard a knock at the door and both turned just in time to see it open and Hannibal step in with a grin on his face and he said, "I always wanted to do that."

"Hannibal!" Jean exclaimed when she saw him.

He just chuckled and replied, "Had you going for a minute, didn't I?"

He stepped in and let the others in behind him. Amy stepped in after Hannibal carrying a box of petit fours, Face came in behind her and had a bottle of wine in one hand and a box of chocolate truffles in the other, and bringing up the rear was B.A. hauling a large bag and looking like an urban Santa Claus on steroids.

"Are we on time?" Amy asked.

"Almost exactly," Murdock answered as he went over to her and kissed her on the cheek, "Merry Christmas, chica."

Jean was shaking her fist slowly and said, "Hannibal, I'm going to get you for this one day."

"I look forward to it," he replied as he pointed to a corner for B.A. to set the presents down.

A round of hellos were said and everybody took their coats off, then moved to the dining room to check out the buffet.

"Looks like you two really outdid yourselves," Hannibal commented.

"Yeah at this rate we won't even need the turkey tomorrow," Face added as he picked up a plate and started piling hot dogs and mini-burgers on it.

"Don't remind me," Jean groaned, "We still have to get it ready after dinner and get it in the oven if we're going to eat it for lunch tomorrow."

"Well don't worry about that," Hannibal said, "I'm sure between the six of us we can manage one dead bird," he paused and added cynically, "I should _hope_ so anyway."

One by one everybody got a plate and took at least one of everything from the smorgasbord and piled into the living room where they sat down to eat. They passed through the meal with small talk through half full mouths as everybody got caught up on what everybody else had been doing for the last few days. It had been almost a week since any of them had come out this way to see Murdock or Jean; though Hannibal had called every day, sometimes more than once, to check up on them. He'd had no doubt that Jean would recover from her attack, and so far she seemed to be making it just fine; Murdock had no reports of nightmares, flashbacks, or suddenly finding her trying to kill him in his sleep. Hannibal had replied jokingly to just give it time, that came more _after_ the wedding.

Hannibal had also taken it upon himself to inform Amy about their engagement, though so far no plans had been made about a definitive date just yet. Everybody was pushing towards sometime after the New Year, though Hannibal had his suspicions that it would be a matter of _which_ New Year. Oh well, in the meantime at least their engagement was official, that was one step in the right direction. He just hoped whatever they planned on was in a timeline fit for _not_ having children born in December, those were always hard to deal with around Christmastime.

As he noticed nobody was looking his way, Hannibal turned his head and looked to the bag of presents over in the corner. They were staying overnight and tomorrow they'd open the rest of the presents but for the party they'd brought something for everyone to unwrap so they'd have something to enjoy tonight. His mind focused particularly on the one package that they hadn't planned to bring. Somewhere in the bag was a large rectangular shaped package in plain brown paper that had no gift tag on it, but Hannibal knew that it was for Jean, and knew that it was from the most unlikely person in the world. Decker had called him to his office earlier that day and told him, because Decker never asked anybody for anything, to deliver it to Jean, and he added that he hoped she was doing alright. Hannibal had taken the package and answered that she was doing very well, and since she wasn't to know where it came from, he thanked Decker for her, and in turn, took a small wrapped package in similar brown paper out of his pocket and gave it to Decker to open up. He had, revealing that it was a new box of cigars, _good_ ones.

Hannibal had said only, "I don't believe in sticking the postman with a fruitcake, nor do I believe in buying cheap cigars, even if they're just to blow up in somebody's face."

Once he left Decker's office, he took the liberty of shaking the package for Jean and based on his many years' experience in anticipating the big unwrapping on Christmas morning, came to the conclusion that it was a box of chocolates. Well, maybe three ghosts paid Decker a visit in the night after all…or maybe _four_ of them.

Everybody went back to the buffet table for seconds, some of them for thirds, and still there was plenty of food left for the party. After dinner they drew numbers and Face came up drafted to help them with the dishes; he couldn't resist complaining about how every time they came over to the house, he _always_ got stuck with the dishes. Once that was over, then came the matter of getting the turkey ready before they could resume the party. Murdock had already saved everybody a lot of trouble by cooking the stuffing before anybody got there, so it was cool enough to pick up and cram into the bird. Once it was stuffed, buttered, trussed up, and wrapped in foil for the night, everybody gathered back into the living room and Hannibal went over to the bag of presents and untied the knot in it.

"Alright," he told them, "Now I've explained this before, everybody's going to get one present to unwrap tonight, and the rest are going to wait until tomorrow." He glanced into the bag to make sure he grabbed the right one. "Jean," he pulled out the plain papered box and told her, "This one's for you."

Jean took the package and looked it over as if she was expecting it to explode, and she looked to him and said, "Thanks, Hannibal."

"Hannibal, I've got one for Amy, can I give it to her?" Murdock asked.

"I don't see why not," he replied.

"Oh good," Murdock sprinted over to the tree and took a small package out of a hiding place between branches. It was a small silver package with a bright red bow on it, he went over to Amy and held it out to her, "Here you go, chica."

Amy looked surprised but she took it and said, "Thanks, Murdock."

"Come on," Jean said as she tucked her package under her arm and came up to the two of them, "Let's see what he got you."

Amy tore the seam of the paper and pulled it away and revealed a cardboard jewelry box. Opening the flap she saw it was for a set: a diamond snowflake necklace with matching earrings.

"Only time you'll see snow around here," Murdock said, "_That_ kind anyway."

Now Amy really looked surprised and her mouth fell open for a second. "It's beautiful, Murdock, thank you," she said as she hugged him in gratitude.

"Yeah, a bit more visually appealing than this," Jean took out her ring pendant, "But mine's more practical."

Amy looked back at her and said, "Oh that reminds me, congratulations on your engagement."

"What congratulations?" Jean asked, "We knew this day was coming, we just didn't know when."

"So when's the big day going to be?" Amy asked.

"We don't know that either," she replied.

Murdock scrambled behind the TV and came back with a big package in blue and white paper and dropped it on B.A.'s lap and said, "Here B.A., this is from me, open it up."

"Do I have to?" he grumbled.

"Come on, B.A., you'll like it," Jean said.

Somehow B.A. didn't look too sure about that. But he grabbed the side of the paper where it had been taped down and ripped it in two pieces in one move, and he did a double take as he pulled out the large black and gray toy van with a red stripe going down the side.

"Hey this is neat," B.A. looked up at Murdock suspiciously and asked him, "You thought of this?"

Murdock nodded proudly. Jean came up behind him and said, laughing, "He painted it with his own widdle hands."

"Oh wow, this is great, Murdock, thanks."

Jean took it upon herself to explain, "He figured you could use it at your daycare center and the kids could play with it."

B.A. looked up at Murdock and said, "Well what do you know? You're starting to get a brain, Murdock…but don't let it go to your head."

"Now _that_ sounds like the mudsucker we all know and love," Jean told Murdock.

* * *

Hannibal chuckled to himself as he flicked the two levers on the remote control for the toy tank Murdock had gotten him and watched it wheel around the room. Never trust Murdock to do anything the easy way; anybody could find a regular remote control tank, but Murdock found one that could be loaded up with, ignite and eject firecrackers at a catapulting rate. That was one feature he was going to have to try tomorrow, he knew that Jean always kept a good supply of fireworks leftover from the 4th of July should a situation call for it.

It had been a good party. After everybody unwrapped their presents and had a chance to try everything out, or on, or eat it, Face took it upon himself to play a few Christmas carols on the piano in the dining room while Murdock and Jean, and he and Amy danced, and B.A. made a long distance call to Chicago and spent the whole time talking to his mother. Then Hannibal had relieved Face of his pianist duties and had him take a turn dancing with Amy. Then at the final dance Murdock had left Jean and went over to join Face instead, much to the Lieutenant's immense displeasure and everybody else's amusement.

After that, everybody had hit the buffet table once again, and Hannibal had noticed Murdock and Jean trying not to laugh every time B.A. got another glass of punch dished up; he had a good idea what the joke was, and smiled as he realized the beauty of the gag was that B.A. would most likely never know his drinks were spiked. As big as he was it was doubtful that any alcohol in that punch, that he wouldn't be able to detect on contact, could ever make him tipsy, let alone drunk. By the time everybody had enough to eat, there was very little of anything left to save for the next day. Hannibal himself was enjoying the fruitcake with the help of a little needle and a shot of rum he'd brought with him.

Now it was late and everything was winding down, along with everybody. Amy and Face were in the midst of falling asleep, leaning against each other on the couch. Likewise B.A. had his head thrown back, his eyes closed and was just about to inhale the drapes from his snoring. Jean and Murdock were the only other ones still up.

"It's been a great party, Hannibal," Murdock said.

"Yeah, thanks for everything," Jean added.

"Don't thank me," Hannibal pointed to Murdock, "It was your fiancée's idea. He had the right idea, he said that nobody ought to be alone for Christmas Eve."

Jean nodded and said, "He's right, I don't think any of us could've done any better tonight if we'd had any pre-existing plans apart." She scratched the back of her head and said, "Hannibal, there's just the matter of the sleeping arrangements."

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"Where're we going to put everyone?" she asked.

"What's wrong with leaving them like they are?" Hannibal gestured to the others who were already asleep.

"Come on, Hannibal, after a couple hours they're all gonna be sore and stiff," Jean told him, "Now, Murdock and I can take my room, and you guys all have your own rooms, but where're we going to put the broad?"

"The what? Oh! You mean Amy," Hannibal realized, "Well she could sleep on the…on second thought, we could put her with Face for the night, and then nobody has to be alone for the night."

"What about you?" Murdock asked.

"I can bunk with B.A., I'm used to that," Hannibal said.

"Hope he don't roll over on ya," Jean told him.

Hannibal chuckled and said to them, "Hey, before we get everybody up, I want you two to do me a favor."

"What's that?" Murdock asked.

"Assuming we even get invited to the big event, when you two get married I'm going to be standing alongside you at the altar, so I won't be able to see you two from the front. So while we're here, and for the most part alone," he leered over at the three sleeping people, "Why don't we do a mock wedding now so I can see how it's going to look from this end?"

Murdock and Jean looked at each other and shrugged and sat down on the couch across from him.

"Okay, so how do we do this?" Murdock asked.

"I'll be the minister," Hannibal said.

Jean guffawed and said, "You'll never make it."

Hannibal glared at her through one eye playfully and said, "I'll ignore that," he cleared his throat and said, "Jean Rhodes, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband"

"I do," she said.

Hannibal turned to Murdock and asked him, "Do you take this woman…"

"He does," Jean answered for him.

Hannibal caught on to the joke and said, "I hereby declare you…"

"That's done," Jean said and pulled Murdock towards her to kiss him.

"And God help us everyone," Hannibal couldn't resist commenting.

* * *

It was after midnight by the time everybody went to bed, after the turkey had been put in the oven and started cooking for tomorrow, and after everybody had gotten their sleeping arrangements in order and gone off to their own rooms for the night. The cold snap was still lingering and making its way in the house through the cracks in the windows. Since Jean's bed was up against the window, she and Murdock had both changed into a set of long pajamas and crawled under the three layers of covers on top of the bed.

"Goodnight, sweetheart," Murdock whispered as he rubbed his hands under the blankets.

"Goodnight, Murdock," she replied as she draped a heavy afghan over the foot of the bed.

"Hey," he called over to her side of the bed.

Jean turned her head to see what it was he wanted, he lay on his side bookending her and flashed a smile and told her, "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas, Murdock," Jean said.

A guttural sound escaped from Murdock's throat as he shivered in response to the cold. "Boy I'm sure glad you _don't_ live in New York anymore," he told her.

Jean laughed and said, "Oh yeah, that'd be a lot of fun trying to thaw you out, keeping you by the oven and turning you every 15 minutes like beach tanners."

Murdock wrapped his fingers around his ring finger to warm the silver and said, "I sure hope the guys like their present tomorrow."

"I'm sure they will," Jean told him.

Murdock looked up to the ceiling and was quiet for a while, then he looked over to Jean and asked her, "Do you think Santa Claus is real?"

"What?" she asked.

"I asked Hannibal that before he went to bed," Murdock said, "It's something that I've always wondered about."

Jean shrugged and asked, "What do you mean, fat man in a red suit living at the North Pole with a bunch of elves and eight reindeer?"

"Maybe, not necessarily," Murdock answered, "My grandma always said that there _was_ a Santa Claus, because somehow at Christmas, no matter how bad things seemed to get, somehow something would always happen to make everything right, things that couldn't possibly have happened by any _reasonable_ explanation."

"Christmas miracles," Jean said as she rubbed her cold nose with the back of her hand, "Miracles aren't to be explained, only believed in, but somebody's got to make them happen. Why not? People always associate this time of the year with magic, and ghosts, maybe there's something to it." She looked to him and said, "Remember what we were talking about when we decorated the tree? The bells are rung at Christmas to ward off evil spirits, maybe there's something to it all."

Another thought came to Murdock and he said, "Maybe Santa's really an angel."

"Could be," Jean replied, "You believe in guardian angels?

Murdock scoffed and said, "_Have_ to with the stuff we pull, you?"

"Four for sure," Jean said with a smirk.

Murdock pushed the covers back and reached behind the headboard and grabbed a few pieces of chocolate from the candy bowl and dropped them between the two of them to split up.

"It's going to be a good Christmas," he said over three pieces of candy in his mouth.

Jean swallowed hers and said, "It already is."

* * *

It was still dark when they woke up. Murdock found the alarm clock and saw that it was only 6:30. They tried to figure out what it was that had woken them up when they both smelled something.

"What's that," Jean asked, "The house on fire?"

Murdock sniffed and snorted and shook his head, "Something's cooking."

They quickly got dressed and ran downstairs to see what was going on, at the top of the stairs they'd been joined by Face and Amy who were equally curious. In the kitchen all four of them skidded to a stop when they saw Hannibal was cooking; and they were especially surprised to see _what_ was cooking. On a plate covered with a paper towel rested a whole pile of bacon and several small sausage links, in two frying pans on the stove he had two large pancakes cooking, soon to join a small stack on another plate, and over on the counter the waffle iron was plugged in and steaming as it cooked four waffles at once.

"You didn't really think I got along all these years by myself without knowing how to cook, did you?" he asked.

"No we knew you could cook, Hannibal," Jean told him, "We just didn't know it was anything good."

"Sure smells good though," Murdock observed as he moved ahead of them to grab a plate.

"I thought it'd be a good idea to eat before we tear into the presents," Hannibal told them as he flipped the pancakes and flattened them down.

"Where's B.A.?" Jean asked.

"He's getting a couple of things out of the van, he'll be here in a minute," Hannibal said, "Have you ever known him to miss a good meal?"

"Have you ever known him to miss a bad one?" Jean replied.

"Alright everybody, dig in, because after this," Hannibal told them, "We going to _rip_ into the presents."

"Your favorite sport," Face commented.

* * *

"Alright Murdock, you can have the present I got you," B.A. said as he less than subtly dropped the large wrapped box in Murdock's arms, "But you've got to promise you' not gonna act all crazy over it."

Murdock managed to hold the present against his chest and raise one hand in a salute as he said, "I give you my word as a mental patient."

B.A. rolled his eyes and let out a grumbled growl. Murdock ripped the paper into shreds and about hit the ceiling when he saw what it was. "A 24 inch remote control Huey!" He jumped up and hugged the mudsucker and said, "Ooh thank you, B.A., I love it."

Jean laughed and snapped a picture of them with her new camera, getting a good closeup of the 'what the hell? It's Christmas, I'll let him live' look on B.A.'s face.

Hannibal let out a whistle as he unwrapped Jean's present for him and said, "A new bottle of gin, I'm going to get a lot of good use out of this."

Face took the top off his new bottle of cologne and took a whiff, and choked. "Strong stuff," he said as he replaced the topper, "Thanks, Murdock, I really…appreciate it."

"I got a nose full of that stuff and I just knew it was you, Faceman," Murdock replied.

Amy stood up from the couch and held her new dress up to herself that had been addressed to her from Hannibal. She couldn't resist going over to the colonel and giving him a big hug as she told him, "Thanks, Hannibal."

"I thought it looked like you," he said with a coy smile.

Murdock put down his helicopter and scattered over behind the tree and came back with a big wrapped box for Jean and said, "I almost forgot, this is for you."

Jean dropped it on the couch and ripped the top off with the ribbon and pulled out the blood red jacket with the German iron crosses on the shoulders. "Hey, I like this," she said as she put it on, "It looks like me."

"That's what I said," Murdock told her.

Face caught sight of a tag hanging from the back of the collar, he reached over and turned it around and felt his jaw drop when he saw it was a price tag that read $75. "Oh, Murdock."

"By the way, Jean," Hannibal spoke up, "We've got a present for you, but we don't have it here with us."

"What's that?" she asked.

"Tomorrow we're going to go see a guy who works for a company that manufactures and sells jukeboxes to bars and bowling alleys, to replace yours that got shorted out," he told her.

Jean couldn't hide the big grin on her face when she heard that, "That'll be great," then her smile disappeared and she said, "Oh, but that's a lot of trouble, and money."

Hannibal shrugged and said only, "It's Christmas."

"Yeah," Jean said, "I guess so." She picked up a box for him and said, "Which reminds me, this is from me and Murdock. We weren't sure what to get you so we decided to get something you could enjoy _now_ and keep the sentiment in mind for later."

Hannibal ripped away the paper and opened the lid on the large cigar box and laughed when he saw the cigars with the pink and blue labels on them. "Oh ho, planning ahead I see," he said as he rifled through them, "Exactly how many kids _are_ you planning to have?"

"We'll wait and get through the first one first and see from there," she said.

Hannibal took out one "It's a Boy!" cigar and one "It's a Girl!" cigar and said, "We'll put these two away for when the big even actually happens, and I'll have the rest of them _now_."

Murdock stood a couple feet behind her looking anxious about something and he asked, "Is it alright if I give you my gift now?"

"Certainly, Murdock."

Murdock got a nervous look of relief on his face and he went over to the TV and picked up something from the back of it and said, "This is…this is for all three of you guys actually, but…I want Face to open it."

Face took the wrapped package, which felt like a framed photograph, he unwrapped it and saw that it _was_ a framed photograph, except the photograph in question was an instant Polaroid that was three sizes too small for the frame it was in. The picture was of a white two story house with a freshly black tiled sloped roof. It had a large wraparound porch and a tall staircase leading up to the porch, and a large yard that was full of green grass and had wildflowers growing around the edges.

"Uh…" Face tried to think what to say, "It's very nice, Murdock."

Jean poked Murdock in the shoulder and said, "I told you he'd never figure out what it was."

"That's what I was hoping for," Murdock said.

"So what is it, Murdock?" Hannibal asked.

"Uh…it's…it's…" Murdock suddenly found himself struggling to explain. Jean would've explained for him but she knew it was his present to them so it was his job, so she jabbed him in the back with her elbow to get it out of him and he said very quickly, "It's-a-house-for-sale-that-if-you-like-it-I-want-to-buy-it-for-you-guys." He breathed heavily and when he caught his breath he further explained, "A couple weeks ago Jean and I went out checking out the houses in the area that are for sale and this one seemed like the best pick. It's got four bedrooms, three baths, there's plenty of closet space for all of Faceman's expensive clothes and all your disguises, Hannibal, and it's in a relatively secluded place so there'd be plenty of privacy. I…I wanted to be able to get you guys a place where we could all be together and…" he looked at Face and said, "We wouldn't have to scam anything nice anymore, we could just _own_ it for once, and no more apartments, no more scammed penthouses…"

Jean stepped in and explained, "While you guys were off fixing Stone's little red wagon, he had me go down and speak to the real estate agent to keep them tied up in limbo until he could get back to finalize anything. See Murdock's got an idea for how we can get the house and it doesn't set off any red flags."

Murdock looked at the others and told them, "If I get the place I'm going to put it in my father's name…I'm sure he's still alive so I doubt very much anybody's going to look into it."

"You see," Jean further explained, "He first got the idea that despite all that the mansions and penthouses that Face scams every month have to offer, especially to a bachelor like himself…that he might have more fun if he actually had _his_ own place to live in, and then he thought it would be better if it was a place that the three of you could live in together, that way nobody ever has to be alone, because one thing he's noticed over the past couple of months is that your residential conman seems to have more fun when he's surrounded by you gorillas instead of off with something young and perky on his arm, despite all his complaining."

The cigar dropped out of Hannibal's mouth as he took the framed picture from Face and saw the house for himself.

"You're serious," he said, not able to make it a question.

Murdock nodded, hoping that he'd done the right thing.

Jean stepped out of the living room, dug around in the dining room closet, and came back with a briefcase and dumped its contents out on the couch for all to see, which were several thousand dollars in large stacks with bands over them.

"How much is that?" Hannibal asked.

"Twenty-five grand," Jean answered, "More than enough for the down payment, _almost_ enough to flat out buy the damn house. Hannibal, we've been out there, we've gone over every square inch of the place, there's nothing else on the market that's as good or any better, and this is something that Murdock's had his heart set on for weeks that you guys could have your own home instead of being scattered across the city in your apartments, so just say yes before as my first duty of being his fiancé, I have to strangle you."

Hannibal chuckled and said, "Well it's hard to say no to that." He looked at the picture again and said, "I'll tell you what, Murdock, we'll go out tomorrow and all give the place the once-over, and if it's as good as you say it is, then we'll get it…you understand me, Captain? I said _we'll_ get it…I appreciate everything you've done, and this is definitely the greatest surprise any of us have ever had, but fair's fair and if we're all going to live there, then we'll all put in the money for it, then it really will be _ours_."

This seemed to suit Murdock, he had a big smile on his face and tears in his eyes, he lunged forward and hugged the Colonel very tightly. Hannibal just chuckled and patted the pilot's back gratefully.

"Let me get this straight," B.A. said, "You thought of this _all_ by yourself?"

"Yes he did," Jean replied, "You've got something to say to that?"

B.A. just smiled at the pilot and said, "Thanks, Murdock, it sounds like a great plan."

Murdock pulled away from Hannibal and told the Sergeant, "And the best part is with four rooms, when your mother comes out to visit she can stay with you."

Face did a double take, "But you mean you're not…" and then he felt like an idiot.

Jean took it upon herself to explain, "Of course we'll be out to visit for periods of time, and then there'll be times that Murdock comes out by himself to stay with you…but really if we're going to be married, then it only makes sense that we stay together for the most part."

"Of course," Hannibal said, "But tell me something, from what you've seen of this house, does it look like additional rooms could be _converted_ into bedrooms if need be?"

"Oh sure," Murdock said, "We could get a couple more in there if we had to."

"Then I think that's just what we'll do," Hannibal told him, "Of course this is all hypothetical so far, we have to see the house first to truly decide. But I think this is the best Christmas present any of us have ever gotten, Murdock, thank you very much."

"Yeah, thanks," Face added, "It sounds like you really planned this all out."

"Well," Murdock shifted his weight from one foot to another and put on a bashful look as he said, "I try."

"Well I think it's a great idea," Amy said, when the others looked at her she explained, "Well just think about when these two _do_ tie the knot, and have kids, that way they'll only have to go to _one_ place to see their uncles and their grandfather."

"Good point, Amy," Hannibal agreed, "I hadn't thought of that." He decided that they'd had their serious moment for the day and told the others, "Alright everybody, let's get back to the rest of the presents."

"Good idea," Murdock said, "I've already got two planes and a chopper, I want to see if there're any more."

"Hey speaking of which," Jean thought of something and turned to Hannibal, "When we took our presents to hide at your apartment, you never told us what _you_ got for Murdock."

"Oh, didn't I?" Hannibal coyly replied.

Murdock found his present from Hannibal, a tiny box hidden behind a stack of other presents, he ripped the paper off and opened the lid and found two tickets in it, and upon reading them he let out a surprised gasp.

"What is it?" Jean asked as she tried looking over his shoulder.

Hannibal laughed and explained, "Our cold snap is due to be ending in a couple days, after which it's supposed to get back into the high 80s, possibly even the low 90s, so I thought that would be a perfect time for…"

"For what?"

Murdock took the tickets out and showed her, "These are two free passes to a water park."

Jean raised her head with a surprised look on her face and she said, "Hey Murdock, wasn't that what you…"

"Yeah, when we went to your folks' home for Thanksgiving, that's just what I said, that one advantage California had over New York was you could spend Christmas at the water park…but I never told anybody, how did…" he looked to Hannibal and asked, "How did you know that, Hannibal?"

Hannibal just shrugged innocently and said only, "Santa Claus is like a great magician, he never reveal his secrets."

Amy laughed and said, "Well congratulations, Murdock, that sounds like a lot of fun."

"Well I should hope so," Hannibal said, "Because…"

"Oh no!" Face said as he opened a box addressed to him and he showed Amy, "Two more passes." Amy just laughed until she about tipped over.

Jean whispered something into Murdocks' ear and she turned towards Hannibal with her arms outstretched and her feet wide apart, similar to Murdock's polar bear impersonation, she marched towards him and locked her arms around him and said, "Thank you, _grandpa_."

The other three ran up and followed suit and they tackled Hannibal to the floor, all of them laughing.

"Alright, alright," Hannibal told them, "Everybody _off_."

One by one they did, and when they got back to their feet, Jean murmured to Murdock, "I just remembered, I've got to get B.A.'s present out of the freezer."

"Oh that reminds me of something too," Murdock left the room and came back with B.A.'s new toolbox and said, "It's not that I wasn't able to wrap it, there just wasn't any room left for the handle when I finished."

B.A. lifted the box up and popped it open and inspected his new collection of tools and he said, "Looks like everything Hannibal's lost me over the years, thanks, Murdock, this is great."

"Well it's _almost_ all there," Murdock said, "I have to replace one of the wrenches."

B.A. looked at him and said, "You know something, Murdock? You' alright when you want to be."

Murdock slapped B.A. on the back and said, "I knew you'd learn to love me."

"I didn't say that!" B.A. replied, but Murdock could detect the small smirk under his serious scowl.

"Well one thing's for sure," Face commented to Hannibal, "This is one Christmas we're never going to forget."

"Nor would we want to," Hannibal replied as he opened his bottle of gin and poured them each a shot.


End file.
